Texas Tech basketball: Scouting incoming 7-foot center Vlad Goldin

Now that 2020 center Vlad Goldin has officially signed with the Texas Tech basketball program, here’s a scouting report on the newest Red Raider.

During the Chris Beard era, it has become a yearly tradition for the Texas Tech basketball program to sign a big man from Putnam Science Academy in Connecticut.  But it has also become a yearly tradition for those players to leave the program.

We saw Malik Ondigo, a 6-foot-11 center, sign with Tech in the class of 2017.  However, he would transfer to Rice after his sophomore year.

A year later, Beard added 6-fot-8 forward Josh Mballa.  But he lasted just one season before transferring to Buffalo where he averaged 10.8 points and 9.6 rebounds this past season.

In the 2019 signing class, the Red Raiders signed 7-footer Russell Tchewa.  But after he played only sparingly as a true freshman, he decided the leave the program, transferring to South Florida.

Now, Tech is going back to the Putnam well with Goldin.  But the question fans are asking is whether he is a legitimate long-term piece of the puzzle or just a short-timer like the other Putnam big men.

The native of Russia comes to Lubbock with serious international experience.  In his homeland, he spent three seasons on one of the top club teams, CSKA Moscow’s Junior Team.  What’s more, he represented his nation at the U18 Euro Championship and U19 World Cup in 2019. He averaged eight points, five rebounds, and 1.5 blocks a game his final season for CSKA and10 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 1.8 blocks in the Euroleague Championship.

Listed at 7-foot-1, he is ranked the No. 192 player in the nation and the No. 21 center in his class by 247Sports. But being as he was essentially a silent commit to the Red Raiders for most of the last six months, he had no other reported offers.

So to get a sense of this intriguing addition, I watched two of his games in their entirety.  You can watch game one here and game two here.  Throughout this piece, I’ll be referencing specific moments from these games and I’ll tell you how far to scroll in order to see what I’m referencing so you may wish to pull them up as you read along.

Now, let’s go inside the game of Vlad Goldin to see just what he might bring to the table both this year and beyond.  And as we do, we will be looking at him from the perspective of whether or not he is a long-term project or an immediate contributor.