Ace, give me some insight on Samuels. The lack of footage until recently scared me ,and even in those clips whitehead looked so much more polished while being younger. My buddy told me he is a workhorse (Terrence), but how about his other attributes? Does he got the ball on a string? Is he an ATHLETE?
Whitehead is a better player and prospect, but that's nothing new as Whitehead has been hyped as NYC next big thing since 8th grade. Before I proceed all my observations are based off of this year(really the past couple of months) as I only recently started attending PSAL games because my cousin works in the school system and I've been hanging with him after work. Samuel imo is a slightly above average athlete, he doesn't blow you away with speed or hops but coupled with his size and strength it stands out more instead of seeing the same speed and hops in a 6'0', 6'1" guy(Bazz for example). As for handles, I'll keep using our current roster to compare, he's not Bazz, but he's a very good ballhandler and didn't show any issues in handling pressure or when bumped(the refs I observed let alot of go so he should have no trouble adjusting to awful college refs). He pretty much gets into the lane at will and I love his vision, in the games I saw he was always setting up guys with either bounce passes or quick no looks once getting by his man. I actually would've liked to have seen him shoot more or look for his own offense as he showed some crafty moves around the rim.
As for weaknesses, shooting is obviously the biggest one as been pointed out in his scouting report. One thing I noticed in the AAU clips of his New Rens squad on youtube is that he seemed to shoot the ball at the end of his jump, on the jumpers I've seen him take recently he seems to have cleaned this up a bit but he still needs work on his form and consistency. As for defense, he plays way too upright, Ollie and the rest of the staff are going to have to school him on this because he will get blown by at will(ala Jeremy last year) if he plays D like this. He has the physical tools to be a very good defensive player(size, long arms, strength) so I expect improvement there once he gets schooled on technique. Another area that he will have to work on imo is dealing with handling the ball more in our offensive system. On his HS team he plays with alot of guys who are capable of handling the ball(Saint-Hillare on his team who is a JR is a pretty good D1 prospect himself, among others) and he'll give up the ball early in his squad's offensive sets. I know that's probably a product of their system but at UConn everything begins and ends with our guards, maybe that will change in the future if Ollie gets more weapons and guys who are capable of creating, but I feel going forward in the future KO is always going to have an offense that features at least 2 guards and possibly a wing with good ballhandling abilities dictating everything. If Samuel eventually becomes a starting PG or a guy capable of giving 20 minutes he's gonna have to get used to handling the ball more for a longer period of time during an offensive set. All in all I'm a fan of him though, I think there's alot to work with to at least become a solid contributor during his career.
Edit: Didn't mean to hijack the thread, I hope we get Harris for depth and having 2 PGs to groom under hopefully both Bazz and Boat and possibly eliminating the need to sign a PG in '14.
