I was in Storrs today for the open practice.
Let me just say that I was extremely impressed by Ahmad Nowell and Isaiah Abraham. They both are well put together physically. Nowell is listed as 6'0, 180 and I say no way to that. He looks a lot bigger. He ran up the stairs right by me, was next to me. He is ready to contribute right now. Excellent body, shot and defended well, and looked like he had a great motor and a lot of energy.
Isaiah Abraham easily had (apart from one Jayden Ross breakaway dunk) the best 3 or 4 dunks of the practice and scrimmage. He is a very high level athlete. He looks like a potential great player at UConn to me. I do not know how much he will play this year, but down the road this kid is going to be a great player. Maybe next year.
I noticed Samson Johnson working on short, one handed jumpers in the lane in practice. In the game, he scored on Singare a couple times, but also one time had his shot blocked by Singare out to halfcourt. Singare had the single greatest play of the scrimmage, handling the ball on the fast break, and going behind his back with a pass to a teammate for a fast break dunk.
The one guy who I thought struggled a little bit was Aidan Mahaney. His body needs some work. I would say all the other guards have better bodies than he does. His shooting looked a bit off. Good defense was played on him by the other guards and I thought he struggled to get clean looks.
You would expect Alex Karaban to look very polished out there, and for the most part, he did. He also had one of two tough defenders on him at all times: Jaylen Stewart and Isaiah Abraham, who both looked good on D.
The biggest disappointment was not being able to see Tarris Reed Jr., the biggest kid on the team, move some bodies around. Apparently, Tarris had a death in his family and is back in Missouri with his family. His debut will have to wait, but in the interim best wishes to him and his family.
After the practice, I did not stick around for the NIL autograph signing. It was not the money so much as I did not want to be the old guy with bad knees blocking some kid from getting an autographed ball from one his heroes. Instead, I went and grabbed lunch at Camille's Wood Fired Pizzas- a pepperoni, meatball and onion pie that was great! They are serving very good pizza there. They are on Route 195 very close to exit 68 off I-84 (in the Big Y Shopping Plaza on the left side).
Anyway, the PS on this open practice is that UConn has a crazy deep team, lots of talent and lots of good players, and I can see this team going a legit 10 deep.
