Thabeet's Close Call

Men's Basketball: Center Did Not Decide On Return Until Last Minute

By: Dan Olender

Posted: 4/29/08

The deadline to declare for the NBA Draft was Sunday.

Had that deadline been two weeks sooner, Hasheem Thabeet would not have been in Gampel Pavilion yesterday practicing in a UConn jersey. He would have been preparing for the NBA.

Thabeet said yesterday that he finally decided to return to UConn for his junior season "maybe two days ago" and that he wouldn't have made that same decision two weeks ago.

"If I had to make a decision at that time, I probably would have left," he said. "I just figured out it was hype talk. Everybody was talking about how I did this year compared to last year, and it got into my head, but I didn't want to feel like I was jumping to what people said."

From the information he gathered, head coach Jim Calhoun said he thought Thabeet would be drafted somewhere between picks No. 15 and No. 20 in the first round.

"I knew a couple teams that really liked him … Both teams thought he'd be a great fit for them at this point," Calhoun said.

Despite scouts telling him how much they liked him and how they thought he should declare, Thabeet took the time to speak with coaches, players and family members to help make this decision.

The biggest push came from Thabeet's mother, who told her son he should stay in college another year, despite the difficult times facing their family back in Tanzania.

"My mom told me I can do what's best for me and I decided to come back to school," Thabeet said. "We have financial hard times out there, but she told me they weathered my first year and they can wait for one more year."

Calhoun expressed his excitement about Thabeet's decision, but he also acknowledged how difficult a choice it was given the 7-foot-3 center's family concerns.

"He promised his father at 15, when his father died, that he was going to take care of his family," Calhoun said. "He does have a younger brother, he does have a sister and obviously a mother. So he does have responsibilities above and beyond the average kid."

With 13 players in the NBA, UConn has produced more current professional alums than any other university in the country. With such a resource at his fingertips, Thabeet reached out to several of those former Huskies who warned the sophomore about people who don't have his best interests in mind.

"I got to speak with Rudy [Gay], Hilton Armstrong, Emeka Okafor," Thabeet said. "They told me, if I think I'm ready I should go.

"Some of them told me, just to listen to coaches and not people out of Connecticut that want you to leave because they're doing business or they're trying to benefit off of you."

One of the results for having Thabeet, the 2007-08 NABC Defensive Player of the Year, stay is that the Huskies will return all five starters from this year's team. Add to that an impressive list of recruits coming to Storrs and many are already considering the Huskies a top-10 team for next season.

Many of those high marks come as people expect to see a similar improvement of Thabeet's game that they saw this past season. Thabeet went from averaging 6.2 points per game and 6.4 rebounds per game his freshman season to 10.5 and 7.9 respectively this year.

Thabeet himself said he was proud of all the work he put into improving his game last summer and that he's looking forward to continuing to practice and improve for next season.

"People always tell me the sky's the limit for me if I keep making progress as I did from last year," Thabeet said. "I'll keep working on stuff that I didn't do [well] this year."

Calhoun has certainly seen the improvement, and just like the people who spoke with Thabeet, he believes the sky's limit for his center.

"The one thing that I hit him with … he's improved more than any player I've had in 36 years in a two-year period, or even a one-year period," Calhoun said. "So one could presuppose that if he does this same type of improvement, or even 50 percent of that, he'll be one of the best players in college basketball next year."

Contact Dan Olender at Daniel.Olender@UConn.edu.