In reply to: I like to see that Elijah Malone visited posted by Mark_It_Zero
material and I suspect that he still isn't D1 material. A ton of coaches watched this kid play against Connor Essegian at Central Noble and everybody passed on him.
Dennis Rodman. These guys went from NAIA to the NBA. So it’s not unheard of that a super talented player is in the NAIA ranks. I know those are rare examples but Shrewsberry and his staff have determine if Malone’s game can translate to the ACC. Like I said in another post, I don’t know if it does or not. I don’t have the background to make that call. It will be interesting to see what they decide.
edit to add: He has visits set up with ND, Indiana and Colorado.
the basket. That said, a surprising number of "big men" don't dunk that much due to lack of leaping ability, hand size and coordination levels. In the highlight reel, Malone shows leaping ability and sufficient hand size to go up in traffic for one handed dunks with both hands.
Malone looks like a classic late bloomer...in his Grace bio a coach mentions Malone was 6'8" when they recruited him...that grew into a big man while in college. Another comment on-line notes that two NAIA to D1 transfers performed very well for Wyoming and Morehead State this year. Riley Minix of Morehead State was great and Mason Walters for Wyoming was solid. With increased competition in practice, nutrition, D! level strength and conditioning, coaching and another year of maturity, Malone could be a Paul Atkinson level player for the Irish.
bucket without relying on dunking. He's not going to get those easy opportunities with that amount of frequency. It was not a very useful highlight video to try to gauge how he'd adjust to a better level of competition.
He knew he could easily dunk on the guys guarding him, so why not go for the sure thing? I'm guessing he was coached to dunk whenever he got the ball in the paint.
Obviously it won't be as easy in D1, so he'll have to incorporate the shot you want to see. The fact that he can shoot the 3 tells me it won't be a problem closer in.
skill than hitting an outside shot. I also have no idea what his 3 point percentage actually was.
That’s what Shrewsberry and his assistants get paid the big bucks for. He is 6’10. He has good footwork around the basket. He dunks when he gets near the basket. He can shoot the three. Can he do all that in the ACC? I don’t know.
Edit to add: He shot 34.1% from three. That would trail only Braden Shrewsberry (37%) for ND.
But Grace plays in the best NAIA conference. Half of that conference is low major D1 quality. He played good competition and was insanely efficient.
for us from Grace College, one of which has played there the past few years.