Nadav,Ray,Doron ...pick your order
As already posted, Caron, has to be at or near the top of this list. He was a beast, though struggled at the end of his Freshman year and beginning of his sophomore season, mainly due to his shot flattening out during that time. I remember screaming at my TV for weeks on end, not to mention posts on the BY, that all he needed to do was add a little arc to his J, which was pretty much a line drive during that span. Well he started to put some air under the ball and he had a monster 2nd half of his Sophomore year and practically dragged the entire team to -4.
Anyhow, My tops Frosh list is as follows: Caron, Nadav, Ray, Khalid, Emeka and Doron. All played like upperclassmen pretty early on.
Honorable mention would be Donyell, Rip, Ben, Boone, Kemba, Bazz, KFree, and even Boatshow. Who knows how big of a freshman campaign he might have had if he had not been jerked around by the NCAAs, having to miss about a 3rd to a quarter of the season.
What makes this type of list difficult is that not all the players had the same opportunities and quality of team when the arrived. Most in the 2nd list either came in during down years or had more players ahead of them that impacted their PT. No one could argue that Ray had that situation, coming off the bench most of his Freshman year, but by the end of that year, he showed amazing abilities. Reminded me of how Coach K didn't play Corey Maggette nearly as much as he deserved, especially in the tourney.
What would be another very interesting list would be best sophs. Guys like Ray, Caron, Donyell and a few others had monster sophomore seasons.
As far as freshman, it's a toss-up between Caron and Nadav. Caron carried a very young team that fizzled in the 2nd half of his freshman season. He was remarkable the first half of that season. As for Nadav, he came out of nowhere and was arguably the piece that made a good team great, that was a bobbled steal that went out of bounds and a bad decision to not cover the inbounder away from our first F-4 all the way back in 1990. Now granted he was not your average freshman considering his age, but regardless if you hadn't known he was a freshman, you would have sworn he was a junior or senior. It broke my heart when he returned it Israel and never returned for his sophomore season.
My UConn time line started in the late 80s. I don't recall what Smitty or even Cliffy were like as freshman. That was just before my time.
I sincerely hope that we can add Adams and Gilbert to this impressive list of UConn favorites.
How about another list, most improved upperclassmen that went from marginal to great. Hilton and Donny would be at the top of my list. Jake might be another good one for this list, though he steadily improved and earned an NBA paycheck in similar fashion as did Boone. You could add Hilton to this group as well.
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