He makes difficult things look so easy. It's almost forgettable. The real beauty in his game is the work he does before he touches the ball. His timing and footwork on seals and spins is second-to-none. He is constantly battling down there so by the time he catches the ball, it's a layup.
It's genuinely 40 minutes of violence for opposing bigs. Sanogo leaves for a breather, and a 7'2 260lb monster comes in and dunks on your head. There is no 220lb center you can push around. If you want to beat us at the rim, you're leaving with bruises.
His touch around the basket is elite this year. The biggest knock on him last year was that he wasn't terribly efficient because his 2pt shooting % was poor. We remember the Nova tournament game and the stretch run where he missed a bunch of bunnies (whether due to fatigue or lingering injury, etc.) and in general he took a bunch of over the shoulder jump hooks.
He went from 51% on 2s to 64% this year on the same amount of attempts. That is a MASSIVE jump. 64% at the rim last year to 75% at the rim this year. And he's not dunking all that much, compared to like Clingan who dunks everything. He shots require touch. He's often sealing and gathering the ball near or under the rim and needing to contort his body or finish across the rim.
I just ran some numbers and according to the data from BartTorvik, Sanogo is shooting 74.87% on non-dunk rim attempts. Out of the 84 guys with more than 300 2-point attempts on the season, he ranks
2nd in the country in that stat. Just absolute elite touch. He's right above Drew Timme, Tubelis, and Jalen Pickett. Ben Krikke from Valpo is #1. Daniss Jenkins from Iona is last lol. Primo is also near the bottom.
