http://maryland.247sports.com/Article/Diamond-Stone-Putting-Work-into-a-B1G-Transition-40463393
Diamond Stone Putting Work into a B1G Transition
Mark Turgeon knows a thing or two about highly-touted freshmen centers.
He’s coached two current multimillionaire big men -- DeAndre Jordan and Alex Len -- in the past seven years. Turgeon’s success with Jordan at Texas A&M helped him land Len in his first year at Maryland, and Len’s development from a raw 7-footer to a NBA lottery pick in two years was a factor in Diamond Stone’s decision to sign with Maryland over Duke, Kentucky and countless other schools.
Like his predecessors, Stone has NBA dreams, and many NBA draft sites already peg him as a lottery pick next year. But he's got plenty of work to do before he's ready to take his game to the next level -- including the adjustment from life as a high schooler in the Milwaukee suburbs to life in College Park as a big-time basketball player. It was a challenge at first, but his teammates have been there to show him the the ropes.
To them, he’s not a freshman -- they aren’t allowed to call him that -- he’s just “the new guy”.
“I thank my teammates for accepting me as a freshman, as a little immature freshman,” Stone said Tuesday at Maryland media day. “It was a struggle at first. I came from Milwaukee about 12 to 13 hours away, all my friends are there, and coming to Maryland I had really no friends. So my teammates are my new friends."
