At 7-foot-2 and 275 pounds, Haas will be one of the biggest players in college basketball next season.
ery floor he sets foot on, but he won't cast quite the shadow
he does now. He won't loom over everyone else like a lone
redwood in the forest. He'll wrestle in the post with those
who can at least come close to matching up physically and
won't have to resort to the sort of guerrilla warfare overmatched high school rivals have.
But right now, it is what it is for the Boilermaker-to-be,
the blessings that come with his jaw-dropping dimensions
— height and width alike; the 275-pounder is more thick
than stick — being accompanied by modest curses.
Sometimes big men play the game because they love to
and sometimes they just play 'cause they're big and are expected to.
In Haas' case, he's all in, has been ever since he gave up
playing offensive line — in a sport where low man wins,
the highest man imaginable can't always keep up — and
was introduced to summer basketball. That is where on the
AAU circuit he was surrounded by those who were serious about the game, in situations that illustrated how he
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IllustrateD volume 24, issue 3
Tom Campbell
stacked up, as well as a welcomed respite from the unsavory tactics opponents had already begun using against
him even before he'd reached 7 feet.
The center's size defines him as a basketball player, obviously, in his natural ability to simply occupy space and
affect games just by standing there. When you're that big,
you almost have to try not to be an impactful shot-blocker
and rebounder, but Haas is regarded as much more as a
player than just a gigantic warm body.
He runs OK for his size, certainly better than you might
expect from someone dragging size-22 shoes along for the
ride up and down the court, and he's developed the ability
to score with either hand around the basket, in the thin
air most defenders lack access to. He says he's developed
some modest perimeter skill that sometimes allows him to
steer clear of the steel-cage matches opponents try to drag
him into around the basket.
But obviously size is first and foremost for Haas, the reason Rivals.com ranked him 64th nationally in the Class of
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