PonyFans.com

June 4, 2009
TCU adds juco big man...
By Van Coleman [email protected]

Jim Christian and his mens basketball staff have added a solid juco big man in 6-10 Cheick Kone...

TCU head men¹s basketball coach Jim Christian announced on Thursday that Cheick Kone (Mali, Africa | Howard College) has signed a National Letter of Intent and will join the Horned Frogs for the 2009-10 campaign.

³Cheick is a great kid that gives us size and athletic ability in the low post,² said Christian. ³We are extremely excited about having another player from a West Texas Junior College joining our program. Cheick has a lot of
upside and potential and was very well-coached from a competitive program like Howard College.²

A native of Mali, Africa, Kone will come to the Frogs¹ program with three years of eligibility after the 6-10, 240 lb. forward/center missed the 2008-09 season due to injury.

Kone becomes the fourth player to sign with the Frogs during the spring period, joining Xavier Roberson (Houston, Texas | Mississippi Elite Christian Academy), Greg Hill (Gary, Ind. | Midland College) and Dernodo Eiland (Aurora, Ill. | Pratt C.C.). Garlon Green (Missouri City, Texas |
Hightower H.S.) signed with the Frogs during the fall signing period.

The Frogs are expected to add two more players to the roster for the 2009-10 season.

Seems similar to the JUCO big we just signed in terms of size and production. From a poster on the TCU fan site...

Some stats & national ranking from his FR year before the injury:

Blocks per game 1.033 (11th)
Offensive Rebounds 1.7 (38th)
Total rebounds 4.367 (45th)

Also, avg 3.13 PPG, shot 58.1% from the field and 56.4% on FT

Not surprising, TCU usually doesn't get a lot of early signings in basketball. What will be interesting is to see how many of these signees actually enroll in August. TCU has been known to roll the dice on some of these kids in the past.

Over on their fan site someone said they had only 2 seniors. they have signed 4 already and the article above says they plan to sign 2 more. With 6 income players and only 2 graduating that means 4 spots need to be opened up somehow.

Our fans are pretty sure that two players won't be back; Rose and Richardson. Richardson did not play at all last year and we didn't know what was up with Rose for most of the year. I believe also had an extra ship that we didn't fill last year.

I would guess that there will be one or two more players that won't be back since Christian has said that we are adding 1 or two more players, One of which is said to be another 6'10 player from Eastern Europe who is more of a shooter to Compliment Cone who is more of a post player. There is one more mystery player that we are after besides the Euro.