Texas Basketball: Grading each Horns portal addition so far this offseason
Kadin Shedrick, C
From the perspectives of production and skill set, I absolutely love what Texas is getting out of the former Virginia Cavaliers redshirt junior center transfer Kadin Shedrick. The fourth-year big man was one of the better two-way rim-running big men in the ACC in the last two or three seasons.
On the other hand, I’m not as big of a fan of how Shedrick’s game fits with the current personnel on the projected roster for next season for the Longhorns (at least on paper). I think there could be a lack of spacing within 12 or 15 feet of the basket for the Longhorns if Shedrick and senior big man Dylan Disu form the starting frontcourt next season.
Disu is often best served playing at the five, as he did for the Longhorns for nearly the entirety of the last two seasons at Texas. He’s a skilled big man that can run the floor, protect the rim, and score at multiple levels on the offensive end. But Disu has yet to prove on a consistent basis during his time at Texas that he can stretch the floor from deep or be compatible with another true center such as Shedrick.
I can go all the way back to the 2020-21 season at Vanderbilt to see how Disu performed when he was playing at the four next to another true center.
There were 16 different five-man combinations that were eligible to be counted including Disu during the 2020-21 season at Vandy. He was the five in 10 of those 16 five-man combinations that season. Yet, four of the six worst five-man combinations in terms of net rating that included Disu came when he was playing at the four next to either Quentin Millora-Brown or Ejike Obinna (per CBB Analytics).
It just so happens that both Millora-Brown and Obinna boast similar playing styles on the offensive end compared to Shedrick (rim-running bigs).
Moreover, there also isn’t a consistent four or five-man combination that I could find involving Shedrick where he was frequently playing with a traditional big man during his time at Virginia. The closest thing I could find to that last season at Virginia was the two-man combination between Shedrick and senior 6-foot-8 forward Ben Vander Plas.
Vander Plas could realistically be described as a floor-spacing forward, which would put him into a similar classification as Disu in terms of play style hypothetically at the four.
Among the regular forwards in the rotation for the Hoos last season (which consisted of four players), Vander Plus had the second-lowest net rating in the two-man combination with Shedrick.
Given the clashing play styles and past lineup metrics for each big man, I have enough reason to believe that there could be some challenges for these two to adjust to playing with each other on the floor at the same time if they’re both in the starting lineup at Texas next season.
For the reasons mentioned above, I am giving the addition of Shedrick a lower grade. I do think this could work, but it’s asking a lot of Disu to be able to adapt his game to become more of a traditional floor-spacing power forward instead of a stretch five.