Originally Posted by
kAzE
I think putting it this way undersells what he's been able to accomplish though. The most impressive thing about Dereck's season to me is that he's completely bought into his role. A lot of top ranked recruits could complain about not getting more touches on offense (see GG Jackson, Emoni Bates), coming off the bench at times, and playing such low minutes early on in the season, but he's been extremely mature and focused on the team. He's done nothing but worked extremely hard to get better. Now, he's arguably the single most dominant defensive player in the country, and still rarely gets enough credit for how much he actually impacts winning.
Case in point: look at the MOTM votes for the Oral Roberts game. It's a relatively even split at the moment, but Jeremy Roach has the most votes. Sure, Jeremy was our leader on offense, scoring 23 points on 17 shots, but IMO Dereck was by far the biggest contributor to the win, in which we held ORU to 30 points below their scoring average. He's a low offensive usage big, so it is what it is. But I'm extremely grateful that we have this amazing kid on our team, and I hope the NBA scouts figure out how good he is, because he deserves to get drafted in the lottery, not the 2nd round like most mocks have him at the moment.