Coach Fred Aura
As we had surmised, Mike Braxton has decided to transfer away from us. I truly believe he will be a good player for some team, as he would have been for us. But while we’ll miss his talent, we won’t miss his attitude. His departure meant we’d take a look at the other players who are transferring to try to find someone who will fit in well with our team and be a productive player.
Mike Braxton transferred to Virginia Tech. So we’ll go up against him after he sits out a year of ineligibility. Virginia Tech also took another transfer player who has the reputation of having ever a worse attitude than Mike…best luck to the Hokies trying to meld the team with those two playing off each other. Basketball Team Equation: LoT – LoBA = TRBL…Lots of Talent minus Lots of Bad Attitude equals TRouBLe.
Our efforts to get one of the top transfer players fizzled, so we wound up taking a bit of a flyer on a player who was transferring from a relatively low-prestige program. SF James Pratt accepted our scholarship offer. Pratt is 6’6” and comes from Burlington, NC. He wasn’t highly regarded when recruited out of high school (he was ranked #1232 as a recruit) but apparently was quite underrated. As a freshman at North Carolina-Greensboro he started all their games, averaging 29.2 mpg, 15.2 ppg, 4.9 rpg, 1.7 apg, 1.2 spg, and 1.0 bpg. What I particularly like is that he hit 46% of his FGA’s, 45% of his 3PA’s, and 87% of his FTA’s. He was the Southern Conference Freshman of the Year and was named to the SOCON All-Conference 1st Team. Besides being a good shooter, he’s a solid rebounder and is very strong defensively. Even though the competition level will be greater here than he experienced for NC-Greensboro, I expect him to contend for a starting role (or be a very effective 6th man) when he becomes eligible to play for us a year from now.
While it’s not possible to know if he can maintain the offensive punch he had for NC-Greensboro, if he can start or come off the bench and provide us with some aggressive fire power from the “3” position, it will be very welcome. SF has continually been the least productive and most inconsistent position on our team. I’d love to have a guy who can regularly connect from the corner to keep our opponent’s defense honest and not playing soft on our SF so they can tighten the defense on the rest of our team.