By: Jay Yeomans

Published: August 18, 2018

A year after struggling to a 20-18 regular-season record and narrowly making it into the newly expanded playoffs, the Shanghai Sharks have added a former NBA big man, Luis Scola to team up with Jimmer Fredette.

Scola, who averaged 12 points a night during his 10-year NBA career, will bolster the Sharks on the inside and provide some much-needed rebounding for a team that got beat up on the glass much of last season.

The Argentinian big-man has been very productive on the backboards during his pro career, averaging 6.7 rebounds during his time in the NBA before more than doubling those numbers with 13.8 boards a night in his first season in the CBA.

Scola, who played for the Shanxi Brave Dragons in 2016-17, is also a gifted offensive player who has put up big numbers his entire career. In his first season in China, he scored in double figures in all 37 games while averaging 27.7 points on 54.3 percent shooting from the field, including 34.6 percent from beyond the arc.

The pickup is a solid one for the Sharks, but it will also mean tweaking an offense where spacing the floor had been the primary focus with Fredette on the roster playing alongside stretch fours in Guerschon Yabusele and Nick Minnerath over the last two seasons.

While both Yabusele and Minnerath could play with their backs to the basket, it wasn’t something that took place consistently through the course of games. Scola’s game is different. He can shoot the ball from the outside, but is at his best close to the basket where he can finish at the rim or kick the ball out to open shooters.

That court vision – Scola averaged 3.4 assists a game last season – should create more open looks for Fredette and the other Sharks, and that is something that will hopefully lead to more wins as Shanghai looks to make the playoffs for the third year in a row.

Carlino heads back to France

After spending the last two seasons playing in different leagues in Italy, Matt Carlino is on the move again, signing with Roanne in France’s ProB.

The former BYU sharpshooter is coming off a season where he led the Roseto Sharks in scoring at 18.6 points per game while also contributing 5.2 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 1.4 steals.

It will be Carlino’s second season playing in the ProB after starting his pro career with Boulazac Basket.

He joins a team in Roanne that finished with a 26-8 regular-season record and reached the ProB finals before falling to Charles Abouo and FOS-Provence.

Ambrosino earns player of the week after huge performance

Agustin Ambrosino has been putting up some very big numbers in his second season in Bolivia.

The former Cougar had one of the best games of his pro career in a 103-83 win over Carl A-Z, totaling 39 points on 12-for-23 shooting from the floor, including 5-for-9 from 3-point land and 10-for-11 from the foul line. He also managed nine rebounds, an assist, a steal and a block in 39 minutes of work.