In what has been an incredibly busy last couple of weeks for Kim English and his staff, Chicago State wing Wesley Cardet Jr. officially announced that he will be heading to Providence College to finish out his collegiate career. He will also be participating in NBA Draft workouts but it looks to be more so to get feedback and compete against some of the top basketball prospects.

Cardet Jr. becomes the fourth player in the transfer portal to commit to Kim English this offseason and is easily the biggest surprise commit so far. Cardet had only just recently entered the transfer portal and his lone official visit was to Providence, which he attended with another recent commit, Jibri Abdur-Rahim.

Cardet Jr. was a Top-75 recruit coming out of West Oak Academy, initially playing at Samford before transferring to Chicago State. You might be surprised to come across the names of those schools for a Top-75, four star recruit who held offers from Auburn, Florida, Illinois, Kansas State, Miami, USC, Clemson, Alabama, Maryland, St. John’s, & Rutgers until you realize that he played for his Uncle at West Oak, then another Uncle at Samford, and then following that same Uncle to Chicago State once he got that head coaching job. Before even getting familiar with Cardet Jr. in Friartown, I would like to go out on a limb saying that loyalty and family are important to my guy. His next stop definitely needed to have a special head coach and culture for him to step out on his own and Kim English appears to be that dude.

“I feel like we shared a vision for how he sees me in the future. I’m going to rock with Coach English. He showed me everything I needed to see. He showed me he’s going to push me to be the best player I can be, and that’s all I needed.”

At Chicago State, the lone Independent Division I team last season, Cardet Jr. put up some impressive statistics for his Junior year. Wesley has started every single game over his 3 collegiate seasons (89), including all 31 games last season, averaging 34.5 minutes per game. Already a 1,000 point scorer (1,314), he averaged 18.7 ppg on shooting splits of 44.4%/34.4%/71.9%. His field goal and three-point shooting percentages remained steady over the past two years at Chicago State but his career foul shooting percentage is actually higher than his numbers show from last season (76.1%). With lesser of a scoring load to carry, I’m expecting an uptick in his free throw shooting back to the mid to high 70’s. Cardet recorded 20+ in almost half of his games last season (14 of 31) and his ability to fill it up should help ease the pain of losing Devin Carter to The League.

Aside from his scoring prowess, Cardet Jr. averaged 4.5 rpg, 2.6 apg, and 0.9 spg. The question that some people might have about Cardet is who Chicago State played last season when they didn’t belong to a conference. So, let’s take a look and see how he did against the highest competition he played against.

@ Northwestern: 30 points (13/21), 4 rebounds, 4 assists, & 2 steals in a 75-73 win

@ DePaul: 18 points (7/20), 4 rebounds, 3 assists, & 1 steal in a 70-58 loss

@ Kansas State: 19 points (6/13), 4 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal, & 1 block in a 62-55 loss

His combined stats against Oklahoma State & Wisconsin were 15 points (6/33), 8 rebounds, 5 assists, & 1 steals in 2 blowout losses. Every single even semi-big time opponent was played on the road by Chicago State. If anyone is going to be the most shocked at the crowd at Providence, it is going to be Cardet. Since their opponents are all non-conference foes, being an Independent, they only played 9 division 1 teams at home (Mercer, Cal State, Morgan State, UT Martin, Delaware State, Stetson, St. Thomas Minnesota, UT Rio Grande Valley, & Bethune Cookman).

Cardet is very shifty and adept at finding advantageous angles to get to the rim. His arsenal of finishing moves around the hoop once he gets into the teeth of a defense are unexpected and deadly off the bounce. Although the above highlights are of the offensive variety and his counting numbers don’t exactly jump off the page, the advanced metrics show that he is in fact an excellent man-on-man defender, ranking in the 90th percentile. His athleticism and length make him a very difficult match-up for anyone he’s guarding.