If you fell asleep at the end of the last Miami Hurricanes basketball season and woke up right about now, well there would be not a single player on the roster you’ll have watched play for the team a year ago.
Yes, it would be fair to say the work’s been put in to remake the roster with 11 new players under new coach Jai Lucas.
The additions include a slew of transfer arrivals: G/F Marcus Allen from Missouri, G Tre Donaldson (Michigan), G Jordyn Kee (Georgia), F Malik Reneau (Indiana), C Ernest Udeh Jr. (TCU) and G Tru Washington (New Mexico).As for freshman talent? A big get was 4-star forward Shelton Henderson, who Lucas flipped from Duke. Plus 4-star guard Dante Allen, a Villanova commit, is now a Hurricane as is 3-star G John Laboy II. Turkish 6-10 center Salih Altuntas will also be a freshman at UM after averaging a double-double for Anadolu Efes and 10.1 points and 9.2 rebounds for the Istanbul Efes U-19 team this past year. Another international addition is Slovakian forward Timotej Malovec, who averaged 6.1 points and 3.1 rebounds for Mega Superbet (hitting 36.5 percent from three-point range)
It’s been good, it’s been a whirlwind,” Lucas summed up on Jon Rothstein’s podcast with CBS Sports. “All in all it’s been a great (start) here in Coral Gables.”
He says that “I feel great about my roster. One thing I wanted and am most comfortable with as a coach is on the defensive side of the ball. I feel we really, really targeted a lot of people that fit that. I want to be tough, be able to rebound, have size, be able to win the game within the game – the loose balls, extra possessions, getting fouled, things like that. I feel I’ve built a team that will be able to exploit a lot of those. Once I get everyone on campus I’ll have to figure out offensively how we want to play. From the defensive side I feel really good about it. We have a good mix of youth and age and international. We covered a lot of bases with this first class and having some that can grow with the program was important to me as well.”
