potential and varied skill set as an incoming Freshman as Nick Emery, and that was Danny Ainge. Ainge came in as a freshman and looked like he belonged on the big stage. Complete package. Shooting, dribble-drives, assists, steals, defense, and the emotional fire and leadership.

Emery has shown flashes of brilliance already. He can score from anywhere and get to the rim with amazing creativity and success. His passing is going to get better and better and he has a huge upside defensively.

I mentioned this a couple of days ago in a thread, but there are several plays from the Belmont game that show both his basketball IQ and his competitive fire.

#1-The alley-oop to Collinsworth for the dunk. A perfectly-placed heads-up reaction pass to Collinsworth's cut off of the back screen at the top of the key. Next year he'll have Mika and Dastrup to alley-oop with, and there should be some entertaining dunks.

#2-The drawn charge. Emery Saw the Belmont guard driving hard down the lane and stepped all the way across the lane and positioned himself in time to take the charge. While he was laying on the ground, after seeing the referee's call, he pumped his fists in celebration. I like the fire.

#3-The steal. The Belmont player had the ball about free-throw line high. Emery reached over and slapped the ball out of his hands and off of his knee. He quickly saw that one of his teammates would recover the ball for a steal, so he took off on the wing for the fast-break. It all happened bang-bang-bang and it shows his quick reaction time and court awareness.

I know that he still has some mission legs and rust and that he has made some freshman mistakes already, and I expect we'll see some more of these, but his learning curve is very good and it will be fun to watch his progress ths year and during his career. Someone posted recently that he is a very fluid athlete, and I think that's a good description. He moves from side to side and around the floor very fluidly. He seems to get to a spot quicker than you would expect him to. And you can just see that competitive fire. The guy wants to win.

How cool is it to have a Freshman Tanner Mangum in football and a Freshman Nick Emery in basketball.