Went to Episcopal last night and checked out Arnaud Moto in action. So I'll give a little report here.
First of all, I stopped by on the way to the bar to watch the Duke game, so only saw the first half. His team on the whole did not play that well in the first half, particularly the first quarter, but I heard they went on to win going away.
For those that will not read the rest of my post, Ill try to sum up what I saw in a sentence or two: we have a guy with a ton of potential. At the same time, he is currently pretty raw and needs some coaching. Probably the #1 positive I took away is that he is a guy who has rock solid hands and a good bit of fight in him around the basket. I think we all agree that we need more of that. He also looks good with the ball in his hands and makes good decisions. #1 negative I suppose is his shot, it lacks ideal rotation and is very slow developing. But its not all bad, he has good arch and decent form/follow through, I did see him hit a few from outside including one three. Just dont ask him to light it up from outside all night long.
Now for the nitty gritty:
First impression is obviously that he is big, wide shoulders that will support a whole lot of muscle, extremely long (I mean his arms reach basically to his knees). With a few years in a college weight training program he could be a true physical specimen. When he gets two hands on the ball, no one is going to slap it out of his hands (unlike so many of our current players). He's got the typle of lethal elbows that you do NOT want to run in to. He grabbed several rebounds that were pretty impressive, over 2 guys, sandwiched between 3 guys, etc. He should be able to effectively crash the offensive glass for us from the 3 position.
It took a while for him to settle in to the game. His team ran a few set plays where they tried to lob it to him backdoor but they didnt work cause the opposition was playing a zone and just clogging the lane. This was an issue also when he was posting up, they would double or triple him. He made a lot of good decisions with the ball though. He would drive baseline and they would double him and he would kick it out to the opposite side to open shooters. He looked good with the ball in his hands, pretty aggresive, but not looking to do too much, willing to distribute, move the ball, etc. Wish he had gotten the ball more, frankly, while I was there. When he started settling in to the game he was scoring a few downlow and in transition and getting tip ins. He looked good in transition with the ball in his hands, but needs to hustle more to fill the lanes. He's not as fleet of foot as, say, Travis. But I would say he is a good deal stronger.
I would have liked to see more energy on defense, but I think that is correctable with coaching and playing against higher level players. He also basically plays center on his team, which isnt natural. They went to a zone at one point and put him up top. He looked pretty good there, no one is going to shoot over him, but he does need to improve lateral quickness. Small fast guards will probably be able to get around him at the next level. But there's no reason to believe he can't be a very good defensive player in college with some good coaching and time.
He also needs to get his wind up. There were a couple times when things got sloppy, as they often do in high school, several turnovers in a row and both teams sprinting back in forth. After these stretches he was pretty burnt and not able to stay out ahead of the guards. He will need to get better in the regard if we want to take advantage of his transition game.
All in all, I would guess he had about 10 and 7 in the first half. Maybe 2 steals and at least one block. Looks like he ended up with 14 and 15 according to the boxscore. Not his best night statistically nor did it look like he was playing his best. But there is a lot there to like.
I may check him out again in a couple weeks and actually stay for the whole game.