Tudor Somacescu | Scouting Report
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Born: 06/15/2005
Nationality: Romania
Town: Targu Jiu
Height: 6-foot-2
Wingspan: 6-foot-4
Position: Shooting guard (1) — Point guard (2)
My thought on his ideal position: Point guard
My projection on him: Ideal NBA player
Tudor Somacescu, who was the youngest player at the FIBA U16 European Championship Division B, grew up in a family where he took an excellent family education. Thanks to his family’s huge vision, he developed his off-court life. His English is very good in every sense. He can both speak, write and read. Romanian prospect is the leader of his team both on offense and defense. He talks to his team all the time and also has good communication with them in the off-court. He was the youngest name in Romania JNT’s youngest and had good chemistry with the experienced players. He is good with people, he is friendly to everyone, has an ego, but has no harmful ego. Played mentally at the up levels of his age, and has great game instincts. Game and general life maturity are very high.
Physical
Possesses great positional size, still skinny but with promising frame, good length, Tudor Somacescu standing at 6-foot-2 with a 6-foot-4 wingspan. The Romanian guard is taller and has promising frame than many Romanian prospects, aged 15, 16 and 17. I think he resembles Yugoslavs. Long but thin arms, great shoulders both width, and strength, stiff core muscles but has room to get stronger. For his lower body, well, needs more thing. Has good lateral quickness, impressive hip mobility, and footwork but he lacks strength in his legs. I think this is a problem. Because Tudor lacks vertical pop and arms strength, so, he has to transfer energy from his lower body to his upper body in order to shoot a good shot, but TS cannot do this because his lower body is also lacking power. Shooting efficiency comes and goes, his release looks good but needs physical tools on shots. Running open floor very well, I think Somacescu is a smooth athlete. He makes up for his lack of elite vertical pop and strength with change direction ability, high BBIQ (watch EYBL 2019, vs. Bayern, first quarter), and body control. Somacescu is very fast during transitions while doing this, he can go anywhere on the court, change direction, and prepare his position as desired thanks to his BBIQ, court vision, dribble and handling.
Offense
Somacescu has a great combination of dribble and handle (Somacescu uses the left dribbling channel much efficient than the right. At the 2019 EYBL and 2019 U16 Championship, he played with 48% from the positions he dribbled to the left and 22% from the positions he dribbled to the right. He also makes TOs less when he dribbles to the left.) of the basketball and looks smooth even while under intense defensive pressure. In fact, it may be natural for someone like him who is not physically competent to have too many simple turnovers in the U16 Championship, but Somacescu has excellent dribbling skill-set (knows how and when using his burst, go-stop-go; can do main layup step, crossover, eurostep; great eye-hand coordination with quick footwork; can use his both hands and this is the most important part on his dribble) for his age. You can see many that in all the matches he played in the EYBL and U16 Championship, he dribbled through the intense defense and hit the layup with smooth athlectisim, great feeling high BBIQ (knows use rim, can take contact with great timing and can change direction both ground and air) in four or five seconds. For the handle of the basketball window, in my opinion, TS knows how to exploit matchups with crafty and shifty handle. Also, he can create spacing for himself and others with an ability to change speeds and drive&dish skill-set. Both primary handler and scorer at U-BT Cluj-Napoca, cannot finish in traffic consistently and doesn’t play above the rim. I think the biggest problem here is not only that he is not physically perfect, but his last touch is problematic. As I said, TS knows how to use rim when layup but he doesn’t have a soft touch. The ball comes out of his hand very hard and unbalanced. I think he should learn to use the balance he has caught in his body during the floater. He can shoot from distance, creating off the dribble or shooting off the catch with hesitation moves but has room to get more consistent from 3-point range and needs to polish his shooting stroke as the ball doesn’t come out smoothly every time. Good free-throw shooter. His gravity effect as a dribbler and passer with the ball draws defenders to him and allows him to break the defense and unleash a variety of passes with either hand to others. As a pick-and-roll handler, not a great passer, average, usually, drive to the basket. As I mentioned, a good transition player both scorer and passer. Needs to learn to create spacing or find cut channels as an off-ball motion player Defense
Defense
I think Tudor Somacescu is very active on the defensive end, showing a good stance with goody eye-hand coordination, curved hip, and BBIQ and to go along with nice footwork and quick hands. He sees things early to help and anticipates well, anticipates well and runs through passing lanes, coming up with deflections, leading to easy points in transition. My favorite thing about his defensive performance is the steal. Tudor had at least two steals per game in both the EYBL and the 2019 FIBA U16 European Championship. In doing so, he reads the game perfectly, shifts his stance according to position, and uses a fast reacts timing. I mean, like his offense, he plays with BBIQ against physical and quick players. Good on-ball defender on outside and around the perimeter. On the other hand, the lack of elite athlectisim and strength hurt his defensive stock. TS is a good laterally but that’s not enough to be a positional or hard inside defender. He can steal if his opponent is keeping the ball out of the shell, too open, but for now, he is a weak link in the painted area both back-to-basket and face-up offenses. Thanks to his IQ, on off-ball motions, read things well and reacts too. Not a rim protector, showed some flashes at EYBL but not consistently. Needs work on pick-and-roll defense. Because when he matches with roller during PnR, he cannot defend anyway, but sometimes Romanian guard makes a mistake of stepping and timing against handlers. He is not a good defender on offense with a lot of action. Great rebounder for his size and age. Averaged 4.2 rebounds at the FIBA U16. In doing so, he uses his positioning knowledge and general quickness.