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The Villanova Wildcats were not the worst rebounding team in the 2012-13 college basketball season, but they still only finished 98th in the country. With that said, Mouphtaou Yarou led the team in rebounding and he will be hard to replace.
Yarou grabbed 7.8 boards per game. He also managed to shoot 47.8 percent from the field, which resulted in 9.9 points per game. He played a big role on this team to say the least.
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The next highest rebounder averaged five rebounds per game and there were a couple of players that were not too far behind that. However, Yarou stood at 6’10” and he will definitely be missed in the paint. When you have a big body in the post, that player will instantly affect the way opposing teams attack the basket.
Yarou may have not been much of a shot blocker, but he was still a very valuable big man.
It will be interesting to see who takes his place and how that player will perform. One thing is for sure and that is JayVaughn Pinkston will have to be that much better. He led the team in scoring this past season and was even second on Villanova in the rebounding department.
This team will still have some talent to compete in the upcoming season, but losing Yarou is a huge loss. Still, Jay Wright is a great coach and a pretty good recruiting class will be coming in. The hope would be for these freshmen to make an instant impact, but we will have to wait and see if that is the case. We will also have to wait and see how big of a loss Yarou will be.
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