A few days after the Sports Illustrated story on Rick Majerus came out over a year ago, I said hi to then-recruit Brett Thompson as he sat behind the SLU bench at a game at Scottrade Center.

What did you think of the story? I asked.

“It will be interesting,” he said.

Indeed it was. The school announced that Thompson was transferring on Friday, in a move that ultimately wasn’t too much of a shock. Thompson showed promise but he also clearly frustrated Majerus at times and one has to assume that made for uncomfortable practices and timeouts. Majerus talked regularly about Thompson’s need to get tougher, lose weight and get in shape, something that he stressed would be important to do over this offseason. I’m not sure what’s next for Brett; I spoke to him for about 15 seconds on Friday afternoon and he didn’t want to talk.

I think there were, within the confines of what you can expect from a freshman, high hopes for Thompson at the start of the season. Majerus indicated as the season went on that he had wanted Willie Reed to redshirt, which would have meant all the minutes for Thompson that he could handle. But by six games into the season, Reed had passed Thompson, taking his spot in the starting lineup and getting the majority of the minutes. (Majerus used Reed and Thompson on the court at the same time for just a handful of times during the season; it was pretty much either one or the other.) 

“He’s lost like 18 pounds, all fat, and he’s got to lose 12 more of all fat,” Majerus said at the start of the season. “He’ll do it. I’ve always been able to do that. I’m great at that (getting players to lose weight), with everybody else but myself. It took a long time to put on and it’s going to take a long time to take off. He’s going to take a long time to get a good body and I’m hoping it comes in about the middle of his sophomore year.”

Thompson got off to a slow start to the season. He started the exhibition game with Harris-Stowe, played just a little in the opener with UMSL, the first of several times matchup problems would limit his minutes, and then started the next three games. His fitness limited his playing time and in uptempo games, he didn’t play much. He was at his best when the other team had a big postman who he could bang with. In the first Xavier game, he had five points, five rebounds and two fouls in 16 minutes, admittedly almost all of that in the second half after the game was decided.

His game was starting to come back together when he sprained his ankle in practice — I was in the hallway outside the gym when it happened, and let me tell you, it wasn’t easy for them to carry Thompson to the training room — and missed the first Dayton game, one where he could have helped, then after a five-point game against Fordham, he didn’t play at all against a fast-paced Duquesne team. He played about 12 minutes per game the rest of the way, and his season stats, as my colleague Nate Latsch has pointed out, were similar to those of another SLU big man, Bryce Husak, when he was a junior.  And by the time Husak was a senior, you started to wish he had two more seasons because he was finally making progress. I think there’s ample reason to think Thompson will continue to get better. How quickly is the issue.

Looking back over my notes from the season, Thompson may have been commented on by Majerus more than anyone on the team, at least on a per-minutes-played basis. Thompson started but played just 10 minutes against Southern Illinois. Afterward, Majerus said,

When you’re able to get away with just being big your whole life playing defense, now you can’t get away with being big so he’s going through a change in that. I like him.”

Prior to the Xavier game, I asked Majerus about Thompson’s development.

“I’d like Brett to be tougher,” Majerus said. “I wish he had Kwamain’s toughness. Brett’s cerebral and I’d like Kwamain to be more like him on occasions.”

And Majerus may have been most upset with Thompson when he missed a layup at the end of the first half of the A-10 tournament game with Xavier.

“We’re down by seven, Brett has a layup, he’s the biggest guy in the gym other than Frease, he’s 6-10, 260, he double clutches the layup, double pumps it because that’s the way the game is going and then they go down and hit that 3 and I’m so mad at Brett that I did a bad job of not getting our guys organized and coming back. At that point there, I think the game was not lost in the period of time, I just felt we could get to the end. I should have taken a fatigue time out in the last four minutes, I’m going to look at the tape and evaluate that. That was my fault as well.

In my plus-minus stats, Thompson finished -44 (meaning over the course of the season, when he was on the court, the opponents scored 44 more points than SLU did), the lowest of anyone on the team. Willie Reed was a +63. But over the final 11 games of the season, Thompson was a +2 to Reed’s -26. So he was clearly making progress. (Or Reed was getting tired.)

A commenter elsewhere decried it, but I think SLU’s starting big men next season will be Willie Reed and Cody Ellis, the 6-8 kid from Australia. And if Reed’s in better shape and his knee is good, he’ll be playing 30 minutes a night.

Thompson’s departure means SLU has 11 scholarships committed for next season (not including Paul Eckerle, who I think will finally have to give his up after next season), which means SLU will have at least two to offer next season.

And Thompson is the sixth player to leave the program since Majerus took over: Adam Knollmeyer, Dustin Maguire, Marcus Relphorde, Anthony Mitchell and Ruben Cotto are the others. I’m not counting Daniel Lisch, since he came into the program with the understanding he’d be leaving the program.