His recent progress has been very promising. He was an embarrassingly poor rebounder for a 7-footer as recently as mid-to-late November 2021. About 5-6 weeks ago, he finally started to really box out like somebody. There's no good reason to think his rapid improvement will slow down at this point, even though he is already 23 years old. The NCAA delaying his eligibility his first year in Knoxville, keeping him out of he early season non-conference games, followed immediately by the COVID year really screwed up his ability to get game experience his first 2 years in Knoxville. He had some rather lame foul calls go against him in some of his early playing time too, which limited his minutes. Getting to play in real games this year has been huge for him, and he is really starting to figure out how to be effective in a real game. He isn't going to become an elite shot-blocker, but seeing him block that shot late tonight (2nd or 3rd on the year?) does make me think that his defense and rim protection ability might be turning a slight corner.
I am very encouraged by the progress Uros is making. Tonight's showing seriously could start to give this squad a bit of an identity we can learn on, taking some pressure off KC and ZZ as freshmen PGs and off the squad as a whole feeling like we absolute have to hit our open 3's (even though we had 8 or 9 of those tonight that easily should have fallen with the quality of looks that they were).
Nice work, Uros. Nice work, Coach Barnes to have stuck with Uros and seen the level he could get to with enough real-time experience.
I am very encouraged by the progress Uros is making. Tonight's showing seriously could start to give this squad a bit of an identity we can learn on, taking some pressure off KC and ZZ as freshmen PGs and off the squad as a whole feeling like we absolute have to hit our open 3's (even though we had 8 or 9 of those tonight that easily should have fallen with the quality of looks that they were).
Nice work, Uros. Nice work, Coach Barnes to have stuck with Uros and seen the level he could get to with enough real-time experience.
