Very Early St. John’s Red Storm Players and Coach Report Card

Chris Obekpa

Enough with the shorts talk already. The Johnnies get a couple of games on national TV and folks are acting as if his goodies are hanging out of his pants. We saw his short-shorts in the season opener. Just because ESPN just now decided to acknowledge them because they aired a few Red Storm games does not mean we have to act like it is super amazing. I mean, it is, but there’s clearly more to him as a player than knowing what religion he worships because when he bends the wrong way the nation sees an awkward visual.

The Positives

He is still blocking shots with absurd ease. As of this scribbling, Obekpa is averaging 4 blocks per outing. Basically, because the lack of a slew of other Red Storm defenders’ abilities, Obekpa is there to clean up all the messes. There might not be a better cleaner of disgusting defense than O’Blockpa.

Obekpa’s offense is much, much improved. No, he is not going to score 20 points a night or anything, but he is now a player St. John’s can run an actual offensive low-post set for and opposing teams can’t just ignore while defending the team. This just creates more viable options for St. John’s while trying to score.

While still not great, Obepka has become a lot better rebounder. Last season saw him average less than five boards per outing, yet that statistic is all the way up to 8.8 this year. He did average 6.2 rpg as a freshman, so hopefully he is just finding his way back to being a solid grabber of boards.

The Negatives

The gosh slam shorts talk. I have had enough. I wrote my first post about it nearly three weeks ago. But now, just now, we are talking about it. My goodness.

His improved offense has come at a price. He is shooting more and it hasn’t been as efficiently as you would like from a center. Obekpa is shooting a woeful .313 from the floor. While that number doesn’t do justice to how good you can tell he has become on offense, it does highlight the fact that Obekpa still needs work.

Oh, and Obekpa is dreadful from the charity-stripe. He gets there nearly six times per game, but only manages to make .58 percent of those. Yucky.

Overall Grade: B-

Obekpa is great. He truly is. I am a firm believer that he will have the best pro career of any members of the current Red Storm roster. Still, he was bordering a C-ish grade because of how inefficient he has been getting the ball into the bucket. You can’t have your lone competent big man shooting under 45% from the floor, nevertheless .313%.

Next: The Bench