By Steven DiMiceli
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Duquesne has added yet another power forward out of the blue. This time it's 6'10 Matt Moss of very, very, very rural western Louisiana. Moss went to high school in Anacoco, a small town about 2 hours south of Shreveport. It seems like the kind of place where a college coach could find an underexposed big man for a late recruiting steal. In Moss' case, he didn't exactly fly completely under the radar having appeared for the Louisiana U17 select team. Moss was an all state honorable mention after receiving first team honors his sophomore year. However, I could see why he wouldn't draw a ton of attention. It's been reported that he drew attention from a number of local schools though no specific offers have been identified.
Moss is not a prototypical big man. He scored 24 points and shot 44% from three while grabbing only 9 boards a game his senior season. His coach described him in an interview with the Tribune Review as having excellent hands, toughness, and compared him to former WVU media darling and Pittsburgh Xplosion player, Kevin Pittsnogle. That's a nice comparison, but it remains to be seen how close that will come to reality.
I'm not sure what kind of a career Moss will present to fans as a bit of a project. However, he does sounds like he has a lot of strong attributes that other Duquesne big men have lacked. First and foremost, he has good hands. I can't recall one Duquesne big EVER, who could cleanly catch a ball For one, it doesn't sound like he'll be completely inept offensively. At the very least, the kid can shot and if his 44% 3 point shooting to go a long with a solid mid range game translates to the Atlantic 10, he'll have some value. Look for him to play further away from the hoop than your average 6'10'' forward. I haven't heard anything about his defense which concerns me a bit. I think it would be safe to say that at best we have a bit of a project on our hands and at worst we have a fringe NCAA player. If we weren't so thin at the 4 and 5 already, I would think he'd be a good candidate for a redshirt.
