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Welcome to The Final Four Is Not on the Schedule discussion board. A forum for the serious and casual MSU fan. Opinions welcome – stay respectful.
I’m curious what everyone thinks about Cooper. Suddenly he seems like the go to replacement for Sissoko the last two games and with the 5s we’re about to see (Edey, Amouryi, and TJD) it makes me wonder if his size and defensive progress is a sign that he may have replaced Kohler.
We talked about it on the preview but I think it will be interesting over the next two games or so if things have truly changed or if those two games were an outlier.
Since he and Hakeem Olajuwan both were soccer goalkeepers, I expect his career to be very similar to Hakeem’s. I hope I am not setting my expectations to high!
Honestly, I have been impressed with what I’ve heard and seen, and he has already surpassed my expectations for his freshman year. I am not really surprised Kohler is having some problems, but we have seen glimpses. At this point, I am expecting that we will see inconsistencies from both Kohler and Cooper for much of the season, but I would not be surprised if come March both of them start becoming more dependable.
My real excitement regarding these players starts next year when we will have them, Sissoko, Booker, Carr, and who know who else. The combination of the returning 3 bigs and then Booker could make MSU as strong as they been in the front court in a long time, or at least since Tillman and Jackson were here.
Defensively, It was fairly obvious I think that Cooper had better tools coming in than Kohler. He is a few inches taller, seems a little stronger at this point, and has better lateral movement. It now seems that things are starting to slow down a little for him on the defensive end as well. He's understanding pick and roll responsibilities and overall D responsibilities better in general. On offense, he's still pretty limited. But we only really need him to be able to catch lobs and set picks in the minutes he's getting. I am in no way giving up on Kohler. I actually expect with a full off-season in our strength and conditioning program he will get significantly stronger and will improve a little with his lateral movement. His upside is still very high, and the future at the 5 is exciting with both of them (and Mady next year as well). Bottom line though, Cooper is no longer the 'reach' walk-on many expected pre-season. He's showing the potential to be a really good post player in the B1G. Maybe just as good as Kohler. It's going to be a pretty good pair going forward I think. One of the last big positives for Cooper is that he appears to be around 6'10" or 6'11" versus Kohler at 6'8" or 6'9". That height might be a big factor on D against some of the size that we will always see in the B1G for the foreseeable future.