UConn's center is taller than yours

His reading ability may be in doubt, but Jim Calhoun says you can’t question the big man’s smile.

7’3 freshman center Hasheem Thabeet was declared eligible for the season Wednesday afternoon, after recent concern over his transcripts had many believing that he wouldn’t qualify academically.

Thabeet will almost definitely start on a team that Calhoun called “just as talented as last year” on media day. That seems right considering he’s going to be one of the tallest players in college basketball and UConn’s other potential center, Jeff Adrien, is about as tall as Khalid El-Amin was skinny.

The best thing about Thabeet is obviously that he’s from Tanzania. Which means it might eventually be okay to call him the Tanzanian Devil, unless some stupid welterweight boxer already has the name. While you can’t have unprotected sex in the country (9% of the country has HIV/AIDS) you can find Wildebeests there. Good stuff on the Tanzanian front.

The one negative here is that almost everyone seems to think Thabeet will be a top ten pick next year so the Huskies are getting a one year guy. I like to think that Calhoun has built a program by progressively developing future NBA players better than almost anyone in the business. I hate to see him go John Calipari on us with the one and done stuff. But I guess that's the game today.