It’s players like incoming Washington freshman Tony Wroten Jr. who have me ready for college basketball. Forget BRI, the lockout, George Cohen and 50/50 splits. College basketball should be extra fresh this year. The powerhouses are back to take the throne, and the talent level – as far as future NBA players – is higher than it’s been in a minute. Wroten Jr. is one of those guys, a 6-4 lead guard who has a chance to be much bigger than his hype. At least he did before. His hype just took a steroid hit, courtesy of his coach at U-Dub, Lorenzo Romar.
Wroten Jr. was considered one of the top recruits in his class until playing with fire – being a football player – came back to haunt him with a bad knee injury during his junior year. All reports seem to indicate he’s back to his old self nearly two years later, so we should be getting Wroten Jr., the potential No. 1 recruit once again this winter.
Over at TheHoopDoctors.com, they reported on an interview The Seattle Times had with Romar where he said this:
On what player comes to mind when looking at Wroten: “Magic Johnson. … I’m not going to tell you right now he’s going to be a 14-year NBA all-star and first five of the all-time greatest player (and) he is Magic Johnson. I’m not going to tell you that. He has the potential of be a great basketball player. I just know that he has that size to where he can look over the defense. Magic was 6-9 and Tony is right at 6-5. … Sometimes guys see things, but they see it a second late. He sees things right as they are developing and he delivers the ball on the spot. And he can do that while going full speed. And those are things that Magic was able to do.”
Romar has been watching this kid since the 8th grade and says it took him about half of a second to realize how good he was. It was instant. Wroten Jr. could see the floor, and read the eyes of everyone around him a split second before he needed to. His coaches say he makes passes that even his teammates at Washington are having trouble adjusting to. Wroten Jr.’s probably a future pro. Still, Romar just put a huge target on the freshman’s back.
Check out the full story at TheHoopDoctors.com.
How will Wroten Jr. do this year?
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