He came off the bench. He could not shoot threes. He was a little timid. In his freshman season, Desi Rodriguez was just an ordinary player. He did not stand out, partly because of the stellar freshmen he was surrounded by and in large part because he did not understand the college game.
Rodriguez came to Seton Hall along with Isaiah Whitehead, his teammate from Abraham Lincoln High School. Whitehead, a five-star a recruit and one of the top-ranked players in the nation in his position, took the spotlight from Rodriguez, and Rodriguez went through his freshman year largely under the radar.