I watched the Oakland/IUPUI game. Please don't ask me what IUPUI stands for. I don't have a clue. It was my first extensive look at Keith Benson. He's listed at 6'11" and 225 lb's. I believe he ended up with 23 points and 13 or 14 rebounds, plus 2 blocks. He's leading his conference in blocked shots averaging around 3.6 blocks a game.
Let me get the qualifier out of the way first. He plays in a second tier conference, very similar to Jason Thompson. In fairness to Oakland, they did play a pretty tough pre-conference schedule. They went up against the likes of Kansas, Memphis, and Syracuse. Two of which are ranked in the top 10. However, all three of those were some of Benson's worst of the year. He did play Cole Aldrich to a standoff and did block 4 shots in that game. What suffered most was his scoring and to some degree, his rebounding.
Now that I have that out of the way, let me say that I'm very impressed with this guy. He needs to put on some muscle. His arms almost rail thin. Despite that, he bangs with the best of them and is stronger than you would think. On one occasion today he went to go up for a rebound and one of players on the opposition held on to his right arm. He actually got off the floor at a weird angle and managed to grab the ball with one hand in a crowd and bring it down.
He's a terrific athlete with good hops for a big man. Defensively he relies on his athleticism a little too much. He has good feet and moves lateraly very well. I wouldn't call him as intinctive a shotblocker as Alabi or Varnado, but you can see the potential there. Offensively he scores almost all of his points under the basket. He relies mostly on dropsteps or quickness, and he's very effective. He does have a 15 foot jumper that he's pretty consistant with. He just doesn't take it that often.
Unfortunately he's surrounded by a bunch of guard and small forwards that have never looked up the word pass. They think it means dribble the ball. They are in fact, horrible. They seldom get the ball inside to him and considering he's shooting around 60% from the floor, one might think it would be a good idea. In the Kansas game which I saw the last half of, he seldom touched the ball. kansas perimiter defense just wouldn't allow the ball inside. Thus the reduced scoring on his part. I like him. I think he's going to be a player.
