Kevin Kruger has added some more size to his roster, as James Hampshire is transferring to UNLV. At 7-foot-1 Hampshire will be the tallest player on the roster for next season.
Hampshire played the last two seasons at Pacific after starting his career at Casper College in Wyoming. Two seasons ago Hampshire played 15.2 minutes per game for the Tigers and averaged 3.7 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.7 blocks per game.
But last season, Hampshire only appeared in 11 games, averaging just 9.5 minutes.
His ability to block shots made him intriguing to UNLV.
“He is an excellent athlete with great size and we are excited about his shot-blocking ability and the rim protection that he offers,” Kevin Kruger said in a team statement.
Hampshire blocked 3.4 shots per 40 minutes played in his two years at Pacific. For reference, Mbacke Diong averaged 2.0 blocks per 40 minutes in his UNLV career.
UNLV now has two defensive minded centers, as the Rebels also added the Southland Conference defensive player of the year in David Muoka.
The Rebels will have a lot of lineup versatility, pending which incoming transfers prove to be capable Mountain West players.
UNLV has three options to play point guard in Jordan McCabe, Marvin Coleman and Keshon Gilbert.
There are five options to play as an off-ball guard or on the wing in Bryce Hamilton, Michael Nuga, Justin Webster, Josh Baker and Donovan Williams.
At power forward, Kruger has three guys with Reece Brown, Royce Hamm and Victor Iwuakor.
And now the Rebels have two true centers in Hampshire and Muoka.
That brings the roster to 13 scholarship players, the maximum. So barring any sudden roster changes, this is Kevin Kruger’s team.
At large tournament bid, here we come!
He actually started his career at mesa community college. Just btws. Also not that it’s important or anything but every team He has played for since highschool except Pacific has had black and red colours. And his high school team sucked because they had a shirt wanna be point guard coach who overlooked him at every possible moment and he was out for half his senior year with a knee injury, cause being tall is hard. Like seriously, he literally tore his ACL cause he grew to fast in middle school. Anyways that’s all folks.
PS not a stalker just a little sister deciding to be a troll on a random online article about her brother. And it irked me that they would forget his actual first community college season, I mean just cause even I made no effort to watch it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen