Wednesday, July 20, 2011

The Gophers picked up a new Point Guard

The Gophers picked up another point guard in St. Louis's Kendall Shell, who is, well, interesting. On the plus side he got a perfect score on his SAT. On the negative side he got a perfect score on his SAT, so how good can he really be? Also on the negative side, he's a walk-on who doesn't even show up in either Rivals.com or ESPN.com's databases. But on the plus side he did at least receive "preferred" walk-on status at Pepperdine which it should be noted is a Division I school.

Honestly there's almost no information on him since he's not on the recruiting radar. Really the only thing I've been able to find is this interview at the gopherhole, and since it's an interview with the player himself there isn't much information you can really glean other than he likes playing defense (good) and fancies himself a good spot up shooter (good if true) and a true point guard (good).

All in all it's probably a move that won't matter in the long run, but when your point guard options are a sophomore whose upside is a back-up (Maverick Ahanmisi), a freshman whose a combo guard (Andre Hollins), and a juco transfer whose only D-I experience was a year at UC-Davis, adding more point guard options is always a plus, particularly since he doesn't tie up a scholarship. Who knows, anything could happen. I can't actually come up with any walk-ons who amounted to anything other than Rychart, but there's probably a few out there somewhere. As long as he's not another Hokenson. I've had enough.


- I also want to mention that I'm in love with Drew Butera and I don't care who knows it. Sure, he hits similar to how I'd imagine a small girl would fare against major league pitching, but hot damn can he throw the ball to second. I'm actually stunned his caught stealing rate is as low as it is at 34%, especially when it was over 50% last year (and most of that catching for slow-ass Pavano). I don't think I've seen anybody steal on him this year. It must have been guys like Brett Gardner and Elvis Andrus and Jose Reyes and Vince Coleman. No mere "base runner" could ever steal on Drewsy, only those lightning quick dudes.

- Lastly, I went to the Twins game last night with Snacks, Old Man W, and Optimator and we went to The Loop pre-game. We grabbed four appetizers: jerk chicken won-tons, sirloin kebabs, pork quesadillas, and calamari. Completely by accident we ended up with pork, chicken, beef, and seafood. That's how awesome we are. Even when we aren't trying to be. Holla.

1 comment:

Nimrod Hilliard said...

Awwwwww, jeez! Coach said he wasn't recruiting me because he didn't want any poindexters.