I have read multiple reports saying that Maryland guard Terrell Stoglin is considering forgoing his last 2 season at UMD and entering the NBA draft. I even saw a quote where Stoglin said he would consider it in the next few weeks so I thought I’d share my thoughts. I am not trying to be mean here but this one is easy to write.

If Terrell Stoglin were smart he would stay in school for the remaining 2 years of his eligibility. He is a guy who is made for college as he has the talent to dominate at this level, but doesn’t have the size to compete at the NBA level. The main problem with Stoglin is that he is small. At 6’0 180 on a good day (even though strength isn’t really the problem, its his height), you would think he would have trouble scoring at any level scoring at a high volume. Stoglin though, is very talented, he can score in a multitude of ways and has obviously put a lot of time into finding ways to get open and finishing over bigger guys. Basically he is so good at the college level because his immense offensive talent makes up for his lack of size.

The problem is that while his talent is what sets him apart in college, at the NBA level they have tons of guys who can score and have the same type of talent that he has. Only these guys are NBA sized too, most of them being about 6 inches taller than Terrell. So if he did enter the NBA, he would be heavily undersized and now instead of standing out with his talent, he would only fit in.

Than you get to the question: what position would Stoglin play in the NBA? He would be undersized no matter what position he would be at, but as I said before he is a SG at heart that even at the college level has the size of a pg. Stoglins best quality is his scoring and he is not a very good distributor at all, so unless he completely changed his game he would have to play SG in the NBA rather than PG. (he is going to have to change his game somewhat either way, but that is drastically changing what he is as a player.) So he doesn’t have the skill set to play PG, but he certainly doesn’t have the size to play SG. He would be matched up with guys that average at about 6’6 in the NBA, which is over a 1/2 foot taller than him. Really there are very few guys Stoglin can guard, he is most likely going to be a defensive liability whatever position he plays with his size but, he would be a huge mis-match with any SG or bigger. Could he play SG and guard the other teams’ PG? Sure but that would require a team to have a tall pg of their own to guard the other teams’ SG. Basically what I am getting at is that with his size, he is a defensive liability in most cases in the NBA.

While Stoglin is offensively talented enough to be an NBA player, his size more than negates that. As you can see he doesn’t really have an NBA position and would be a defensive liability every night for whatever team he plays for. If he came out this year, I would actually be surprised if he was drafted. I hope he doesn’t make the same mistake Jordan Williams made (leaving after his soph year, not getting drafted til the 2nd round, ended up getting sent down to D-league. Not saying his career will be a failure, but off to a bad start.), because really Stoglin has less of a chance than Williams had. The fact that he is even considering it might be indicative to how oblivious he is to the whole situation. To be honest, I think our center Alex Len has a better potential NBA future than Stoglin by a decent amount. As crazy as that sounds now and as much how productive as Stoglin is in comparison to Len right now at the college level, all the NBA guys care about is how their games will translate at the NBA level. Unfortunately for Stoglin, his game doesn’t translate well to the NBA at all and would be making a big mistake if he left Maryland this year or next in my opinion.