Freshman point guard Trey Thomas is a bit of a mystery

There is an eternal debate over what college basketball coaches should do with scholarships that come open late in the recruiting cycle. Some coaches will simply “bank” the scholarship for the next year’s recruiting class, often carrying less than the allotted maximum on the roster. The theory goes that if they take a chance on a guy late in the process, the program might get stuck with a subpar talent on the roster. Then again, the fact that coaches will more or less intentionally go into a season with 11 players on scholarship suggests that it doesn’t really make much of a difference if the 12th and 13th players on the roster aren’t up to snuff.

Anyway, I’m generally of the opinion that the program is better off just giving the scholarship to someone if for no other reason than to have an extra body, and who knows, the guy might end up working out. So it was for Jerry Stackhouse, who still had a scholarship to give going into the summer — and instead of taking the Bryce Drew route of saving the scholarship for later, he picked up Trevon “Trey” Thomas, a 5’11” point guard from the Toronto area.

Probably the most notable thing about Thomas is that he’s related to Elijah Fisher, a top-five prospect in the Class of 2023, but Thomas might be a late bloomer — he had a bunch of low- and mid-major offers in the fall, and instead bet on himself, and had a really good senior year that had better programs calling — until the pandemic shut everything down. But Stackhouse, with a scholarship available for 2020-21, probably figured he had nothing to lose.

I frankly don’t have any idea what to expect here. He wasn’t rated in the 247 Sports composite, with Rivals and 247 both giving him a two-star rating — but that may be a result of a lack of evaluation as much as anything. Anyway, here’s the closest thing I can find to a highlight tape.