Are you looking at the highlights just posted, or his AAU/Oak Hill stuff? Because those highlights are pretty limited in what you're going to get from them IMO. Those kids are 6" shorter than him and less athletic by a mile. I look good playing against the 11-year-olds in the park too (dropped 8/11 of my team's points earlier this week. My eligibility is up, unfortunately). The more important videos you're going to see if you don't have the time to watch full games would be stuff from Oak Hill and AOT.
I think you're probably not reading his skill set very well, or haven't seen the better highlight if you are thinking he might be like Carlton. Carlton has great footwork and offensive skill; he's just very limited athletically. Cardwell has very limited skill but is a better athlete than Carlton will ever be naturally.
The good is that Cardwell's built strong and runs fast. He has the "look" of a modern rim running/screening big man in a 4 out offense. He can dunk everything. And most impressively, IMO, is that he is super conscious of trying to stay straight up when contesting at the rim, almost too much. He still got 2.3(?) blocks per game in AAU so that should be a signal he's doing something right positionally on D. I think long-term he probably fits Hurley's vision of our team better than Carlton. Post ups (Carlton's skill) are out of the vogue right now, and I think Hurley seems to be trending towards that.
The bad is that he is extremely raw offensively. I mean, not very good at all. His FG% is solid at 62%, but he's only scoring 6.2 ppg. FT percentage stinks: 48.6%. I'm not sure he'll see much action as a freshman because of the limited offense, especially if he can't pick up the defensive end really quickly, as bigs are known to do.
He can dunk and that's really it. His offensive game is noticeably stiff. This would be fine if he was good at rolling to the right spots, and knowing how to get in position on drives. From what I saw the couple of games I watched this summer, that is not the case. Luckily, Kenya is a tremendous bigs coach and if he works hard that stuff isn't *too* hard to learn, really.
