UMass Basketball: Minutemen add transfer big man Isaac Kante

With the addition of another experienced big man in Isaac Kante, the UMass Basketball roster is coming together nicely for Frank Martin’s debut season in Amherst.

Only two core rotational players — Noah Fernandes and TJ Weeks — remain from last year’s roster, but it’s hard to argue that Frank Martin hasn’t vastly improved UMass Basketball’s short and long-term outlook in his first offseason at the helm in Amherst. The upgrades at the guard and wing positions had been obvious since early this Summer when transfers like Matt Cross (Louisville) and Rahsool Diggins (UConn) committed alongside promising Freshmen like RJ Luis and Keon Thompson.

South Carolina big men WIldens Leveque and Ta’Quan Woodley (combined ~9 points and 7 rebounds last season) followed Martin from the SEC to the A10, and 6’8″ BC transfer Gianni Thompson added to the possibilities down low when he committed as well, but it was still clear that UMass would benefit from adding depth there with their remaining scholarships.

The situation in the post for UMass improved remarkably last week with the addition of Tafara Gapare, the highest-rated recruit in the A10 this season according to 247Sports.

But even still, Gapare, at 6’10” 205 pounds, is really a stretch forward that is able to handle the ball and penetrate from the wings. One still looked at the roster as a whole after his commitment and felt like another true big man would be a godsend for mitigating foul trouble and/or injury problems at the 5.

New Assistant Coach (and former Head Coach — how often can you say that?) Derek Kellogg brought just the solution with him when he joined the staff earlier this week after last coaching LIU-Brooklyn. Big man Isaac Kante (12.0 points and 7.5 rebounds for the Sharks last season) is the latest addition to UMass’ roster, and while he almost certainly won’t be in contention for any all-conference accolades come March, he’s exactly what the Minutemen needed to round things out.

As a 6’8″ 245-pound grad student (played for Hofstra before transferring to LIU), he’ll bring experience to a still relatively young roster and, more importantly, another true back-to-the-basket big man outside of Leveque and Woodley for Martin to rely on.

It’s hard to project how the minutes will be distributed on this team with so many new and talented players, but it’s abundantly clear that practices this Fall will be a bloodbath, and there are now zero positions on the depth chart in which players will be asked to take on more work than they can handle.