Little Hank

Hank Thorns has become a bit of a fan favorite in Blacksburg because of his diminutive size, only 5'9" on a good day, his tenacity, and his spunk. Plus the girls think he is cuter than most puppies. But Little Hank has only been good for one thing with the Hokies during his ACC career: Ball-handling. Okay, get your minds out of the gutter, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The guy can handle the rock and is currently averaging 4.3 assists per turnover, good for tops in the ACC. However, every other part of his game is lacking for an ACC player. He can't shoot worth crap. He's too small to guard most players in the league. He obviously can't rebound. And to top it all off, he's a poor free throw shooter as well. For a while, I was thinking that he could really elevate his play and contribute to the team. I wanted him to be the next Muggsy Bogues. Okay, Muggsy was only 5'3", so his success story is insurmountable, but let's go with Nate Robinson (formerly of the Washington Huskies and currently playing for the NY Knicks). Robinson is a 5'9" guard who can finish on the break and can hit the open three pointer. He doesn't let anyone push him around on defense. That's what we need Hank Thorns to be, but that's exactly what Thorns isn't. Robinson never let his size dictate the way he played, but for Thorns it is too obvious that the tall defenders in the ACC make him nervous and cause him to overcompensate on his shot. The sad truth is that you need to play much harder and practice much harder than every other player on the team when you are only 5'9"... that's just the tough truth, and I'm not sure Hank has shown the ability to step up to that challenge yet.

So the question now becomes, what to do with Hank Thorns next season? Seth Greenberg recruited two high school seniors to help out at the point and allow Malcolm Delaney to eventually shift over to his more natural shooting guard position. Those recruits are Erick Green of Paul VI high school (DC vicinity) and Lamont "MoMo" Jones of Oak Hill (middle of nowhere in Mouth of Wilson, VA, but a very prominent high school for b-ball). Erick's size is extremely similar to that of Malcolm Delaney, but he is a more natural point guard. MoMo is only 6'0" tall, but he still has 3 inches on Thorns and has a much more "robust" physique (he's beefy... reminds me A LOT of Pitt's Levance Fields). Those two recruits were both actively recruited by a number of good schools and certainly have the size and shooting ability to play in the ACC, so what would you do if you were Greenberg? Do you keep Thorns as a backup PG? Do you start Delaney next year or move him to SG and allow either MoMo or Erick to run the point? Do you let Thorns walk away from VT and play with a smaller mid-major school where he would have the chance to start? Personally, I can't decide what I would do. For right now, I think I would tell Little Hank that the only way he can keep his position as backup point guard is if he continues to work on his shooting and shows the ability to hit the open three. Otherwise, I would let him know that he'll be riding the pine as a junior and senior. It's a difficult call to make, and one that I don't envy for Seth Greenberg, but the bottom line is that Hank can't continue to eat up minutes and be a complete non-factor on both offense and defense. At this point, he needs to show more than just a willingness to improve; he needs to actually improve.