Juwan Howard’s second year (a guy with real NBA potential)
31.5 min, .506 FG%, 7.4 RB per game, 267 total RB, 524 total points, 14.6 points per game, .70 FT%, with a 160 free throw attempts.

Ekpe Udoh
26.1 min, .433 PG%, 5 RB per game, 155 total, 186 total points, 6 points per game, .59 FT%, with just 54 attempts.

You may laugh and say you can’t compare him to Howard, but that is exactly what we are talking about, NBA potential. So you must compare him to guys like Howard, because NBA teams will be comparing Udoh to all the other guys in college ball like Howard. He has the same NBA potential as almost every guy in college. “If he gets a lot bigger, stronger, faster, and improves his shooting he will be a top pick.” That’s a lot of ifs.

Like, for instance, Petway. How many coaches would have loved to have him? And how sad is it that a world class athlete like that ends up in Amaker’s hands, only to not improve in one facet of the game over a painful 4 years.

Ekpe was 6/16 from three this year.

Ekpe is not a lock for the NBA or anything but saying he has no chance is kind of crazy. He definitely needs to become a dominant rebounder along with shot blocker though and keep working on his offensive game.

But if Ekpe was the type of player where losing him would set our whole team back a couple years, we would not have won just 10 games this year.

In basketball you only need a few outstanding players of that caliber to be a great team (see this year’s versus last year’s Celtics, or this year’s versus last year’s Ohio State).

Losing him will hurt us, but in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it will have that great an impact. I would revise my prediction of 17 wins next year to 15.

I like that he has NBA dreams, but it doesn’t matter where he would transfer, he has no shot at being an NBA player of any significance. All but a handful of the guys on Memphis and Kansas have any real shot of being productive NBA players. There are just too few NBA teams and players. As of right now, he does not dominate inside (despite his shot blocking ability), has virtually no outside shot (yes I remember that one three pointer he made late in the year), and cannot handle the ball. So what exactly does he bring to an NBA team?

I’m working on a couple more “Report Card” features but going to wait for this Ekpe situation to play out.