2011-12 Final grades: Kyisean Reed

Kyisean Reed - Junior
36 games, 28 starts
 ________________________
Averages
25 minutes
10 points
5.1 rebounds
0.6 assists
61.4% - FG
0.0 - 3pt
67.9% - FT


Hey, back on the final grades finally as we near mid-June. Better late than never though, and eventually the three leading scorers on last year's team were going to get their big review. So let's put Kyisean on the hot seat and break down his roller coaster of a junior season.

First and foremost, the season was a roller coaster for everyone, which had to have made the task of fitting in as a JUCO transfer that much more difficult for Reed. Still, Reed made it six straight seasons in which the Aggies had a JUCO transfer among the team's top three scorers, joining some pretty impressive company in Brockeith Pane, Nate Bendall, Jared Quayle, Gary Wilkinson and Steve Ducharme. And while Reed's overall season numbers are lower than all of those guys, he put together a couple monster games that could easily stack up against the single best games played during any of these guys' junior seasons.

Some games were a totally different story though, so let's break it down...

Positives: There were a handful of games where Reed looked unstoppable, most notably in his 12-of-13 shooting effort against Kent State, which was arguably the best single-game performance of any Aggie this season outside of Preston Medlin's brutal destruction of Idaho on senior night. His leaping ability contributed to a handful of jaw-dropping rebounds, blocks and dunks throughout the year, which also became momentum changers in a lot of games.

One of the biggest things for Reed though was his shooting percentage of 61.4 percent. For not being much of a back-to-the-basket kind of big man, that number is excellent! Much of it is due to being in the right place at the right time, while some of it can be attributed to getting garbage points with his athleticism. Really though, Reed just rarely ever took bad shots.

Negatives: Inconsistency! While that's the basically the blanketing negative for the entire team, Reed's inconsistencies appeared to often be due to a lack of a will to dominate a game. One game he would be aggressive, flying around making plays. The next, he would seem to be a ghost. My guess is that Ben Clifford's consistent fire out there is what earned him a start or two over Reed at points throughout the year. And while he rarely strung two bad games together, those bad games made things even more difficult for the other guys down low trying to pick up the slack.

Summary: Dominating at times, disappearing at others. That's the best way to sum it up, but the same can be said for everyone on the team. For a guy in his first year with the program, on a team crippled by injuries and recruits who never actually arrived, Reed was really pretty good! His potential is through the roof with his athleticism, and he already could fill up an entire highlight reel with his dunks and blocks from this season. Based on what he showed to be capable of, thinking of what he could do with a more consistent senior year gets a little scary.

Final grade: B