Kansas State Basketball Player Preview: Hagop “Jack” Karapetyan & Brian Rohleder

As we continue looking forward to the start of college basketball season in early November, our early preview of the team continues with two players: incoming freshman Hagop “Jack” Karapetyan and redshirt sophomore Brian Rohleder.

Jack Karapetyan

Karapetyan, a freshman forward from Los Angeles, brings the greatest unknowns of any player on this team. Standing at 6’7″ and 220 pounds, he brings some needed length to the squad. The final player signed to Bruce Weber’s inaugural recruiting class, Karapetyan went to a small, private Armenian school during his high school career.

Karapetyan dominated at the lower-level with TCA Ashag Dickranian School, located in Hollywood, CA. His better season was his junior year, when he averaged 32 points and 18 rebounds per game. Faced with the problem of low exposure, he then played one season at Cathedral Prep in Los Angeles to test himself against better competition, where he helped the team to a 15-8 record including an 8-2 mark in the Camino Real League. He will be more of developmental prospect over the next two years as he adjusts to the collegiate game, and should be making an impact by 2015.

Brian Rohleder

Brian Rohleder walked on to the Wildcat team during the 2011 summer semester after being a two-year letterman at Bishop Carroll High School in Wichita. While Bishop Carroll struggled during the regular season, Rohleder really stepped up his game during sub-state and helped the Golden Eagles to a berth in the 5A State Tournament. He led the team in scoring (13 points/game), rebounds (six), assists (three), and steals (1.5) his senior year while shooting 54 percent.

Rohleder played in eight games – including four Big 12 matches – his freshman year, with his greatest involvement being five minutes against Howard. While only averaging 1.9 minutes in those eight games, he still grabbed a rebound in four of them and averaged 0.8 per game (that’s about a rebound every two minutes – imagine a player keeping up that rate over an entire game).

With a loaded line-up of guards last season, Rohleder agreed to redshirt his sophomore year. While concentrating on scholastics, Rohleder was damn impressive in the classroom. A mechanical engineering (I’d be lucky to get through his introductory courses), he carried a 4.0 last fall and was named to both the Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll. Standing at 6’3″ and 215 pounds, there’s not a lot of video or in-game evidence to judge. He definitely seemed to get after it when given limited opportunities back in 2011-12, and could be an exciting player returning to the court in 2013.

Click a link below to read the rest of our player previews:

Brandon Bolden
Marcus Foster
Thomas Gipson
Wesley Iwundu
D.J. Johnson
Nigel Johnson
Jevon Thomas