He was the best player on the court at times during his Freshman year, especially in that Indiana game, so I think the ceiling is still high for him. I think they were optimistic on the timeline for the sake of the player, but realistically he wasn’t going to be close to 100% this past year. With something approaching a normal offseason and more time spent working on his body, there’s no reason to think he can’t get back on track where you’re seeing a high level defender that brings a different dimension offensively.
Sanogo and Whaley can probably be put in Sharpie as the starting front court but a healthy Akok opens up a lot of interesting possibilities, especially to keep teams from collapsing on Sanogo as he becomes even more of a force. If we’re going to continually bring a big out to the top of the key to clear out as we did with Whaley a ton this year, I’m much more comfortable with that guy being Akok who does have the ability to spot up or take a guy off the dribble and get to the rim.