Santiago Trouet got asked to scout himself, which is the question most players answer badly. He answered it in about forty words and managed to say four useful things.
“I mean, I feel like I’m a pretty smart player, play hard, don’t take plays off, rebounding obviously. And then I’m starting to add my 3-point shot now in practice. I think it’s going to open up my game because I’m faster and more agile than most bigs. So taking them off the dribble, I think that’s going to be the main thing this year.”
Smart. Plays hard. Rebounds. And then the part that is actually new: a three-point shot that he is openly describing as under construction, and a plan to attack other big men off the bounce.
For a 6-11, 230-pound senior, “taking them off the dribble, I think that’s going to be the main thing this year” is a bold sentence. It is also almost word-for-word what Chris Beard was describing when he was asked about Trouet in his own availability.
“He has skilled size,” Beard said. “Santi’s not a position-type player. He’s not a big, he’s not necessarily just a small forward. He’s a guy that can do a lot of different things.”
“I grew up playing as a 3”
Somebody asked how much of the perimeter he can cover. Trouet did not hedge.
“I think I can play 3 through 5.”
Then came the follow-up that actually explained it — whether, like a lot of guys who get tall late, he came up playing on the wing.
“Yeah, I grew up playing as a 3, and then once I went past 6’8, I just turned into a 4, so I think that helped my footwork, helped my game a little bit.”
That is the whole scouting report in one sentence. He has guard footwork in a center’s body because the body arrived after the skills did. Asked how tall he is now, he gave the answer every tall person gives: “6’10, 6’11, yeah.” Ole Miss lists him at 6-11. San Diego, where he started, listed him at 6-10. He is somewhere in there and it does not much matter.
What Beard said in the same week
Here is where it gets interesting, because Trouet’s self-assessment and his head coach’s assessment do not disagree — they are about completely different things.
Trouet talked about skills. Beard talked about standards.
“He comes with great experience, you know, real minutes in the Big 12 last year. So we have an expectation, kind of a standard for him different than some of our first-year guys in the program because we respect where he came from. We respect the league he played on.”
And then:
“With Santi, it’s like day-to-day discipline. It’s doing the right thing possession after possession. Nobody doubts his talent or his ability, but now it’s like the commitment, you know, to do what he’s supposed to do every single time. We’ve been hard on Santi. Maybe as hard as any new player we’ve had because we have such high expectations for him. But he’s slowly, you know, really earning my trust. I’ve always respected him, but I’m starting to kind of trust the guy a little bit.”
Nobody doubts his talent. Hardest-coached new player on the roster. Starting to earn trust. That is a coach telling you exactly where the ceiling is and exactly what is in the way of it, and he did it without being asked a hard question.
Worth noting what Trouet said when he was asked about his rotation spot, because it reads differently once you know Beard has been leaning on him:
“I mean, we don’t know that yet, but just trying to be positive every day, lead the younger guys, the freshmen, or the guys who haven’t played a Power 5 game yet, be vocal and just keep the energy up every day.”
A guy being coached harder than anyone else in the gym, describing his job as keeping everybody else’s energy up. That is either the right response or a very well-rehearsed one, and either way it is the one Beard is looking for.
“1 through 15, everybody’s a Power 5 player here”
Asked which bigs he is competing with, Trouet gave the answer that has now been given, in some form, by every single Ole Miss player who has been put in front of a microphone this fall.
“I mean, all the bigs here. Everybody here is good. Roman, CB, everybody here is good. Even if they haven’t played Power 5, we have — I feel like 1 through 15, everybody’s a Power 5 player here.”
Roman is Siulepa, the 6-7 Brisbane forward in from Pitt. CB is almost certainly Christian Brown, the 6-8, 240-pound sophomore in from James Madison. And “1 through 15” is not a coincidence — Beard used the exact same frame in his own availability, except he used it to make the opposite point: “It’s not always about just getting the most talented players 1 through 15. It’s about putting a puzzle together.”
The players are using the number to say nobody here is a walk-on. The coach is using it to say talent alone was never the plan. Both of those can be true, and on a roster with this much late portal construction on it, both of them need to be.
On Beard, and on the shot clock
Asked what it is like being coached by Beard, Trouet had a useful frame of reference.
“I mean, I come from a pretty hard-working coach, so I’m used to that. I’m used to that style of coaching. But yeah, great, great coach, great, great effort every day, and he just tries to win the day, day by day.”
Win the day. That phrase is going to come up all season.
The best basketball answer of the session came when he was asked how the game differs between overseas and the United States. Trouet, who was born in Buenos Aires and came through school in Portugal and Florida before playing club ball in Spain, did not talk about skill. He talked about pace and shot selection.
“Just, I would say overseas we’re more — we’re not as athletic, so we try to use the shot clock more, take better shots. And here everything goes faster, so you just gotta get — you have to change your body. That was the main thing for me, changing my body and just learning how to play, uh, going from side to side in a faster time.”
Use the clock, take better shots. That is a description of a possession economy, and it is a genuinely different instinct from what the SEC asks for. Asked whether he has adjusted to the speed, he was blunt: “Yeah, yeah, I definitely adjusted a long time ago.”
He has had time. He started at San Diego, moved to Arizona State, and played real Big 12 minutes last season before Beard got him. Oxford is his third American stop and, by his own account, his first small town.
The Oxford part
“I love the team, love Oxford. Honestly surprised me coming from a big city.”
He had never lived in a small city before. “That was my biggest concern coming from San Diego first, then Arizona. Tempe was pretty fun. That was my biggest concern, but it surprised me so far.”
Surprised him how?
“Just like people say it’s boring, but I don’t know, being in a college town, SEC town, it has something to it, you know?”
A 6-11 Argentine who has lived in Lisbon, Madrid, Florida, San Diego and Tempe, arriving in Oxford braced for boredom and finding out it has something to it. Ole Miss should put that on a billboard.