Kante looks to have great hands for both receiving the ball and especially rebounding. Seems disciplined on the defensive side. I'm not seeing much more than rim-runner/put back type on the offensive end. Which makes me think he's basically last season's Fede with more rebounding upside. Assuming Fede, GDG and JDG all have typical incremental improvements- that's a pretty good collection of bigs.
You could see Kante backing up Fede. GDG behind Hinson with less minutes at the 5 and more of JDG at the 3.
If the guards push the ball they will all need breaks to keep up.
I don't see Fede starting. I think Guillermo is the frontrunner to start at center, the same center that started that helped us win 2 NCAA Tournament games when Fede was hurt. Fede had a DR rebound rate of 13.5 for the entire season, which is painfully bad for a center. The bottom line is, Fede isn't a good rebounder. The other issue is, Fede and our defense got exposed badly against any player that sucked Fede out away from the basket either for deep midrange shots or 3 point shots as he couldn't defend when he got stretched out. The entire defensive collapse really started against Virginia Tech where Basile was killing Fede with long range shots and we had very poor rebounding under the basket. Teams started doing this more and more, getting Fede away from the basket, and our entire defense fell off a cliff because of it because the guards couldn't stop dribble penetration and Fede couldn't block shots being 20 feet away from the basket. And we were giving up 2nd chance points like crazy.
In the EYBL and peach jam combined, Kante held his man to 31% shooting for the entire season which is cream of the crop level in high school basketball. Kante held his man to .55 points per possession. And the opposing team scored on 23% of the possessions they had the ball against him. The NY Rens were arguably the top defensive team in AAU basketball and Kante was the main driver why. It is not a stretch of the imagination at all that Kante is going to be our best defensive player and most efficient rebounding player on both ends of the floor starting on day 1. Im not concerned with the offense as long as there are legit 3 point shooters on the floor and Kante understands his shooting limitations. Kante can make shots. He shot 30% in the EYBL from 3 and 38% from 3 his senior season. The problem is, when he starts missing these shots, he doesn't know when to stop shooting them and he can be very inconsistent. Capel will yank him out if he starts getting shot happy like in stretches in the EYBL.
However, lets remember Kante shot 60% from the floor in the EYBL and scored 10ppg. The last time we had a player anywhere close to 60% shooting with double digit scoring in summer play was Steve Adams. His efficiency was strong and would be a lot stronger if he had better shot selection.
I think Kante has quite a few similarities to Josh Boone. Boone was the starting freshmen power forward for Uconn in 2004 and won the national title. He also backed up Center and Boone had zero game what so ever outside 10 feet. What Boone did, however, was bring elite defense, rebounding, and shot blocking to the table, and was a highly efficient scoring inside 10 feed of the basket with short range jumpers, putbacks, dunks, layups, etc.. Boone also could run the floor very well at 6'10 and Uconn overpowered teams on the inside with Boone and Okafor with Rashad Anderson killing them from 3 as the sniper who couldn't play defense and Ben Gordon being the 3 level scorer.
As for the 3 position, lets not forget we just won 24 games this year with Greg Elliot starting. Elliot was 6'2, could barely dunk the basketball and is a below average athlete, and was consistently beat off the dribble all year long. The last time Elliot dunked a basketball in a college basketball game was the year 2018.
2 of the biggest reasons we were so weak defensively this year was because of Elliot and Cummings. For as good as they were on offense, they couldn't stop anybody on defense and couldn't stop anybody with dribble pentation and keeping their man out of the paint. They were both very small for their position, both were unathletic, and both were heavy footed on defense with very minimal athletic ability. A slimmed down Hinson should easily and I mean easily be no worse than Elliot playing defense last year. Hinson has almost 5 inches on him and is a better athlete and with 2 legit shot blockers that can rebound on the backline, it will make things a lot easier.
Lastly, I can see Kante taking on the best offensive frontcourt weapon on the opposing team. Whether that is the 4 or 5 from the opposing team, Guillermo can take the weaker player.
