Wake Forest Potential Grad Transfer: Former Marshall PF Terrence Thompson

With the Dinos Mitoglou news coming out yesterday it has become painfully clear that Wake Forest needs to get some help at the power forward position if at all possible. While it is still pretty late in the cycle (the pre-season practices start in a few weeks), there are a couple of guys who could still come to Wake and play this year.

We have already gone over Jack Whitman, the former William and Mary big man who enrolled at Kansas but withdrew a few weeks later. He could fit in very well at Wake and would fill a huge gap at the 4.

Another name that came out this week is former Marshall PF Terrence Thompson. The 6-7, 215 pound PF announced that he would not return to Marshall for his final season.

There are a few things about Thompson that make him enticing as a potential grad transfer beyond just the obvious need for a body.

He is from Durham, NC originally, and also enrolled at Charlotte for his freshman year, where he did not play before transferring to Georgia Higlands Junior College, and eventually winding up at Marshall for two years.

While there is a certain stigma and aversion on Wake Forest’s part when it comes to JuCo transfers, Thompson made the Conference USA Honor Roll in 2017, which means he had a GPA of at least 3.0. This should assuage a fair amount of concerns regarding his academics, and perhaps indicate that the move to Georgia Highlands was more of an effort to showcase his basketball skills for D-1 programs.

He is also a biology major with a chemistry minor and has expressed an interest in becoming a doctor after his student-athlete days are over. This bodes well for Wake Forest because of the strong ties to the medical community in Winston-Salem.

The first thing that sticks out with Thompson on the court is his high offensive rating (112), and his strong offensive and defensive rebounding numbers. He averaged 9.1 PPG and 6.5 RPG, while primarily functioning as a typical power forward. He does not possess the same stretch four capabilities as Mitoglou did, shooting just 7-24 (29%) from behind the arc on the season.

An abdominal injury limited Thompson to 23 games, and he missed 12 games in the middle of the season. Once he came back he was a leader on the court for the Thundering Herd in their unique up-tempo, three-point shooting offense.

He had six games of ten rebounds or more, including three double-doubles. Quite frankly this looks like a perfect match. Wake Forest has two open scholarships, can essentially promise a starting role, and has the academic prestige that Thompson is looking for post-basketball.

I am high on Thompson and think he should be a main priority for the staff to get on campus as soon as possible.