Much like relief pitching in baseball, you can never have enough rebounding in college basketball. Last year, depending on which end of the court the shot was missed, Xavier was anywhere from kind of bad to really bad at securing rebounds. With Mike Nwoko and Nikos Chitikoudis also in the fold, Xavier added on Rolyns Aligbe to further beef up their rotation of frontcourt players who are proven glass cleaners in the college ranks. The Minnesota native who was joined by his brother Prince last season at Southern Illinois comes to Xavier, joined by his brother Harrison, with two years of experience and an indeterminate number of years of eligibility remaining as he adds some further depth to Xavier’s frontcourt.
Aligbe has a tantalising set of skills that makes one hope he can put it all together at some point at Xavier and blossom into a star. The first thing that stands out, and the reason he will likely be a part of Xavier’s rotation from day one, is his absolute dominance of the glass, especially at the defensive end. He had a handful of games last year where he pulled down more of the opponents misses than the entire other team did and hauled in 23% of the opponents misses overall, good for 65th in the nation. He didn’t lag far behind on the offensive end, ranking 179th in offensive rebound rate and having 11 games with three or more. Before you assume this to be a bruiser without any finesse skills, Aligbe shot 34% from deep last season on 2.2 attempts per game and averaged a steal per game as well. Couple that with low turnover rate and a downright pacifistic in terms of Xavier’s frontcourt foul rate of 4.1 per 40 minutes and you have a player who has a myriad of things he does well. What he will likely need to refine is his scoring around the rim, where his mark of 51% was worse than any Xavier player who took more than 20 attempts at the rim last season, and his free throw shooting, which is 62% for his career.
If you squint you can see Aligbe being the type of all action matchup nightmare off the bench that Kaiser Gates or Jerome Hunter was for some good Xavier teams of the past. He gets after the boards like a maniac, has active hands on both blocked shots and steals on the defensive end, and can step out and shoot the three. The flaws in his game are evident, but with Nwoko and Milicevic ahead of him in the rotation, he should get chances to show his strengths while bringing his weaknesses up to speed. One only need look at the jump he took from his freshman to sophomore years, one which MVC coaches saw fit to reward with a place on the conference’s Most Improved Team and see a guy who will take the steps needed to try to get himself to where he needs to be to contribute as a player.