Noah Thomasson excited about Georgia roster, teammates for 2023

As Noah Thomasson was going through the recruitment process out of the transfer portal, he made sure to take a look at the current rosters of the teams he was considering. He wasn’t trying to figure out where they would be the most playing time. He’s confident enough in his game that it would come wherever he landed – and he should be. Instead, Thomasson was trying to figure out who had a roster already in place that would be able to compete right away with him added onto it.

“We started looking at what schools had a strong roster, a chance to do something special if they added me,” Thomasson told Jeff Goodman and company on The Field of 68 podcast where he made his commitment on Tuesday. “… Justin Hill is my guy. I’ve been knowing him since we were eight or nine years old. We played AAU together in the seventh grade with Gulf Coast Blue Chips. That was somebody that, a chance to play with him again would be cool. And I have another funny story. Big Russ (Russel Tchewa) that just committed to them from South Florida, I scored my first college points against him. He was at Texas Tech at the time, I was Houston Baptist and we played them at Midland College, a neutral site game, and I got in with about two minutes to go. Texas Tech, they could really guard. He fouled me, I got to the free throw line and made both free throws. So that’s an interesting story too.”

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Hill and Tchewa offer an interesting look at the two sides of the roster. On one hand, you’ve got a returnee from last year’s team. Hill helped the Bulldogs to a 16-16 record in 2022-23, an improvement of 10 games from the season before. It was the second largest win total improvement in the Power Five. He’s the team’s returning leading scorer having averaged 8.6 points per game, primarily coming off of the bench last season. Then there’s Tchewa who is among the newcomers. A transfer from USF, the 7-foot-0, 280-pound Tchewa committed to Georgia on May 1st. He started 56 of 59 games over the last two seasons for the Bulls averaging 11.1 points and 8.6 rebounds in 31.4 minutes per game this past season in the American Athletic Conference.

Of course those aren’t the only two players that probably have Noah Thomasson intrigued. Georiga brings back four others from 2022-23 with Jabri Abur-Rahim, Matthew-Alexander Moncrieffe, Frank Anselem and Jusuan Holt. The Bulldogs have added eight players in total this offseason with high schoolers Blue Cain, Silas Demary, Dylan James and Mari Jordan coming on board as freshmen while RJ Melendez (Illinois) and Jalen DeLoach (VCU) join Thomasson and Tchewa as transfers. Combine the two sides of the team together and it makes for a group that’s got Georgia fans excited to see what the Bulldogs can do this coming season.

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Thomasson chose Georgia over the likes of Pittsburgh, St. Johns, Penn State and San Francisco – all four of whom were included in his top five along with the Bulldogs. He has one year of eligibility remaining having spent his freshman season (2019-20) at Houston Baptist, the 2020-21 COVID-year at Butler Community College and the past two at Niagara.

“I’ll be playing for Mike White at the University of Georgia,” Thomasson said as he made hit commitment. “Every coaching staff was really great, this was a hard decision to make because of all these great schools, but at the end of the day, they were one of the first schools to reach out to me and build a bond and relationship. I got to see them multiple times, hear from them and what their goals are for me. My dad lives in Atlanta so that’s not far. When I looked at this, I just thought, ‘This feels like home.’”

Thomasson averaged 19.5 points per game this past season to lead all scorers in the MAAC, shooting 48.1% from the field 38.6% from 3-point range in 31 games. It came just a year after averaging in double-figures – 10.8 points per game – during his first season at Niagara. He played over 30.0 minutes a game each year as he started 60 of 61 possible games.

Thomasson finished the season off scoring in double figures in 29 contests including 21 straight to end the year. Seventeen times did he hit at least 20 points with a trio of performances over 25 points. That included a season-high 35 against Canisius in the final game of the regular season when Thomasson made 15-of-26 attempts from the field. On eight different occasions did he hit four 3-pointers while reaching double-digits with his made field goal attempts six times.