Texas Tech Adds Basketball Commitment: Montrell McDonald

Congratulations to Pat Knight as Montrell McDonald has committed to and signed with the Red Raiders. McDonald is a 6'6", 185 pound small forward. Trolling the internet, there's not much news on McDonald, other than McDonald's decision was down to Texas Tech and Kansas State, which means that that's at least one player who will not be opposing the Red raiders.

Here's McDonald's numbers from last year:

Firsts things first, I'm happy as hell we got McDonald. From all accounts, he's an athlete with an all-around game, probably very similar to Martin Zeno's game. I like the field goal percentage, the rebounds (5 boards a game would have led the team), the high number of assists (again, would have led the team) and the ridiculously high number of steals. That's a guy who can defend, pass the ball, score when needed and at a decent rate, but he can't hit his free throws. Granted, all of this was done at the JUCO level, but at the very least it shows that McDonald has basketball skills.

If you want to look at the spreadsheet I created on McDonald, then click here.

Searching YouTube, you come up with an instructional video with McDonald in the last third of the video, showing off some crazy-mad dunks:

Here's the only problem, this puts Pat Knight in a pretty serious numbers game in terms of scholarships. By my count, here's who returns: Roberson, Roberts, Singletary, Cook, Craig, De Bem, Prince, Suljagic, Rizvic, and Voskuil. That's 9 guys. With McDonald, you also have Cohadarevic, Graham, Lewandowski, Okorie, and Ray. You should also be aware that Graham hasn't qualified yet, but previously it was just a matter of Graham not taking his SAT's, rather than a grades issue. I think the limit for basketball teams is 13 and that's 16 guys. I'm wondering if Rizvic will hold a full scholarship for the entire year, but other than that, I'm really wondering who is going to go.

I don't fault Pat Knight for doing this. If he doesn't win, and win relatively quickly, then he's not going to be in Lubbock very long. He's got to be aggressive and he has to balance winning now versus building a program that can grow.