Chris Baldwin tweets that Arafan Diane is friends with, and recruited Djafar Silimana.
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My guess is about the time Sillimana is ready to see the floor Diane will be long gone.
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I’m still disappointed about Ced Lath never being developed into a rotation player for us despite him being in the program for years and years. And Ced Lath had some big scholarship offers come in on him coming out of high school. Makes it hard to get excited about our next longterm developmental recruit Djafar (from a basketball standpoint) but he’s a great story and I hope he proves me wrong in the years ahead. If nothing else, he’s Arafan’s friend and hopefully helps Arafan on and off the court next year as they both start their Houston journey together
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Ced had offers for reasons iykyk
Taking on developmental projects is hit or miss. For every Ced Lath there is a Chris Harris Jr. I don’t consider Jacob McFarland or Kiyron Powell as projects because they had skill but got sidetracked by their injury.
In a way, J’wan Roberts and Javier Francis were projects, if you compare their skill set when they arrived vs when they left. Truly remarkable.
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CKS can take projects and turn them into draft picks. He took a 3 star out of Manor HS and made him a second round pick with the Raptors.
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I never considered Shead a project. All he needed was experience and guidance from Sampson.
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I stated on here during $head’s freshman year that he reminded me of CP3…
A big difference between taking on projects 5 years ago and now is we aren’t in the AAC anymore. The level of competition and our recruiting has had to get much better and has. It was easier to introduce players slowly back when you are trying to beat Memphis, Tulane and Tulsa as opposed to asking them to go out there and beat Arizona and Kansas.
Every year now we seem to bring in a 4/5 Freshmen. Even very very good recruits like Mercy and McCarty have had to wait their turn in hopes of seeing the court. Maybe in the AAC days, a guy like Ced Lath who is now at Nevada could have stayed and gotten AAC minutes. Not the case here when we sign the #1 Center in basketball back to back years
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Shead and Sasser were not projects out of high school.
I cringed every time Shead played as a Freshman. A turnover waiting to happen! And extremely tentative. But the finished product was great.
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They were 3 star prospects with few offers, mostly lower league teams. That would suggest they were not considered ready to come in and start at a high level right away, i.e. projects
Shead was a four and certainly considered a high end recruit. Sasser was a great shooter in high school and played well here as a freshman.
He also came from excellent bloodlines.