With the promise that we have seen from Lewis II, Littleson, Castro, and Smith and add Wheeler in, a nice big to put between Sanders and Mike would be a great way to go! For the last 25 minutes last night, guard play was really solid.

While I would love to see a 6'10" to 7' center, you run a big risk recruiting such a player because there are only a handful of talented, ready to play big men each year, and the top programs gobble them all up. Thus, any player in that height range would be a project and require lots of coaching and time (i.e. D. Lewis). It's unlikely such a player could help us right away.

Dukes2012 wrote:

While I would love to see a 6'10" to 7' center, you run a big risk recruiting such a player because there are only a handful of talented, ready to play big men each year, and the top programs gobble them all up. Thus, any player in that height range would be a project and require lots of coaching and time (i.e. D. Lewis). It's unlikely such a player could help us right away.

While I agree with everything your saying, it's risky, could be a project, not provide an impact right away, I feel it's still the way to go because of what we already have.

With the addition of wheeler the guard position is basically an embarrassment of riches, and I can think of a number of guys off the top of my head who can play the 3 over the next couple years (James, walker, Mike, and littleson when they want to go small) and then the 5 guys I mentioned who can play the 4 and 5, but are more tradtitional 4s.

We have every essential piece you need for a roster locked up at the moment. That is why I think the risk is worth taking on a luxury piece like really tall true center even if your return on investment takes a little longer to come to fruition. I would go after a really tall guy who possesses some skill but is really skinny, or a really tall guy with some skill who is heavy. These are the type of guys that fall to programs like us, and can be developed.

A perfect example of this is Umass's Rashaan Holloway. 6'11", was like 350 coming out of high school. Really soft hands and quick feet. Played sparingly as a freshman but looked good. His offer sheet looked like the average guy we recruit, no BCS offers. Now he's a sophomore, down to 310, and is having a big impact on the team so far this year. Imagine him as a senior, he'll be a force.

Plus even before a kid like that is really developed, he can still be useful for winning tipoffs and guarding a guy if your playing a team with huge size like we saw with Abele and early d Lewis.

Duques102 wrote:

ElDuque wrote:

No one expected Darius Lewis to help at all.

Big, pleasant surprise.

Exactly, I would love to see a picture of him as a freshman and now, he looks like a different person. And I would argue that while he has developed a ton since he got here, he still isn't a great player. He is pretty good at blocking shots but the hands still aren't great (rebounding or catching passes), and he still misses a lot of bunnies around the hoop, even when being defended by smaller guys.

All that being said, he is still extremely effective and disruptive solely because of his size, and we will really miss having that in the coming years if we don't replace it.

There is nothing wrong with having a role player at that spot. Remember when Carroll brought in Ricky Lopes? Lopes was quite limited, but he was big, and intimidated other players on defense. Most of all, he allowed Carroll to take Derrick Alston, from center, where he was an above average player, and move him to the 4, where he was dominant. If we could have found a player like that when Saunders was here, we might have gotten over the hump. Instead, Saunders was diminished by having to play against other team's centers.

Just want to point out Darius Banks still seems to not have committed anywhere...

https://n.rivals.com/content/prospects/778
http://www.espn.com/college-sports/basketball/recruiting/player/_/id/203703/darius-banks
http://www.scout.com/player/194264-darius-banks

i have no leads as to anything, no insider knowledge. i was simply curious to see where this kid landed, and the answer is still nowhere.

according to his twitter, he's less than 200 points away from 2000 career points in h.s.