Three takeaways from Jordy Tshimanga's transfer
Nebraska was hit with some late roster attrition late Thursday night, as head coach Tim Miles confirmed to HuskerOnline.com that junior center Jordy Tshimanga had asked for his scholarship release and would transfer from the program.
Here are three quick reactions to Tshimanga's departure and what it will mean for the Huskers going forward...
1. This shouldn't come as a surprise
While the timing of Tshimanga’s decision to transfer is a bit odd, it shouldn’t come as a total surprise given his recent history.
Tshimanga already left the program once when he briefly contemplated transferring last season before NU’s road game at Penn State on Jan. 12. Though he eventually returned to the Huskers five days later, it was clear he wasn’t happy about his diminished role and perceived lack of development on the team.
After starting the first 18 games of the season before his short hiatus, Tshimanga finished the year as a primary reserve off the bench, averaging 4.0 points and ranking third on the team with 4.6 rebounds while playing just 13.6 minutes per game.
Then there was plenty of smoke surrounding Tshimanga leaving again after former assistant Kenya Hunter, who was the former Rivals150 prospect’s lead recruiter to NU, took a job at UConn earlier this spring.
Once again, Tshimanga opted to stick it out in Lincoln, but it was only a matter of time before he finally decided to move on for good a couple of months later.
2. Had he stayed, Tshimanga might have been an odd fit
It was no coincidence that Nebraska’s late-season turnaround last year started almost the same time that Tshimanga came back to the team as a bench player.
His brief departure essentially forced NU’s hand at playing what would end up its permanent starting lineup the rest of the season, with the versatile and uber-athletic Isaiah Roby taking over at the five alongside Isaac Copeland at the four.
The Huskers turned into a different team once they moved to that smaller and much more dynamic lineup, and looking ahead to 2018-19 and beyond, it seems likely that head coach Tim Miles will want to stick with that formula.
Nebraska does lose a big piece from its already thin frontcourt as well as one of its top rebounders from last year, but from an offensive standpoint at least, it’s hard to see how Tshimanga would have helped much.
All of that doesn't even include the fact that he was also coming off clean-up surgery on his knee, which gave him problems much of last season, and had an indefinite recovery timetable before he could even fully workout again.
3. Work needs to be done on the recruiting front
Tshimanga’s loss might not hurt much regarding statistics, but it does leave Nebraska with only 11 scholarship players and a paper-thin frontcourt just four months before the start of the 2018-19 season.
The Huskers could probably still get by with the group currently in place, but there’s no doubt that adding another low-post body now becomes a much higher priority.
I would expect senior walk-on Tanner Borchardt, who was placed on scholarship for the 2018 spring semester, to receive one of those open scholarships for this season.
I also would think Nebraska will actively seek out another instant-impact big via the junior college or graduate transfer markets if nothing else to provide another body in the post rotation.
It certainly doesn’t help that it’s so late in the 2018 recruiting cycle, as many of the top immediately-eligible transfers have already been picked over. But that doesn’t mean NU can’t still find a player capable of providing some decent minutes off the bench, even despite the timing of Tshimanga’s transfer.
The Huskers landed Thorir Thorbjarnarson on Aug. 7, and Evan Taylor committed on July 11.
The situation is clearly not ideal, but it’s also not impossible.