In Reply to: Give It Up, Kawai. posted by NYBruin on April 02, 2025 at 19:09:46
(on a consistent basis) to become the high impact center he has the potential to become--but even at his size, nothing is guaranteed. With his youthful and very tall body, he's got at least a couple of years of gaining strength and stamina plus adding some weight before he can consistently become the dominant force that many here were expecting of him, IMO.
He did have a few good games for the Bruins this year but overall, he just didn't seem to have the staying power to go for more than 6 or maybe 7 minutes at a time without getting "gassed". Some periods of illness had an affect on his performance too.
My wife, who watches all of the UCLA games with me, commented that he is also way too immature at this stage of his career to have that meanness and toughness a big center often needs. Edey and smaller guys (compared to Edey) like Purdue's Renn are good examples of those characteristics I'm talking about. Hated to see him leave as I was looking forward to watching him develop his body and game.
But that's what we have now in the college game. Unfortunately, we are going to have to get used to the currently unregulated wild and wooly NIL and portal environment until the entire process can eventually be standardized and brought under some kind of controls.