Aubrey Coleman, the reigning NCAA scoring champion out of the University of Houston, has signed a deal with Turkish team Aliaga Petkim according to the Hurriyet Daily News.
Coleman averaged 25.6 points per game for the Cougars last season, but made just 42% of his field goal attempts - including hitting a dismal 32% from beyond the arc.
Nonetheless, the 6-foot-3 shooting guard's scoring prowess got him a look with the New Orleans Hornets in the NBA Summer League where he shot a much improved 51% from the field on his way to averaging 11.4 points in 17 minutes of action down in Vegas.
With the Hornets, Coleman was asked to play point guard during most of his time on the court - and while he defended the opposing team's point guard and brought the ball up the court, that's about the extent of his point guard playing duties.
Coleman typically reverted to what he's best at - scoring the rock, obviously - instead of trying to initiate the offense and get his teammates involved. He was very good at what he was trying to do, too, it just probably wasn't in his best interest to show that he's still a gifted scorer when he probably needed to show more aspects of his game off in order to secure an NBA training camp invite.
It's difficult to pinpoint how the rest of Coleman's career will go. On the one hand, there are plenty of undersized two-guards in the NBA with questionable shot selection but who are great scorers nonetheless. On the other hand, Coleman showed that he was able to efficiently score in an NBA-type setting down in Vegas and still wasn't afforded an NBA opportunity (or at least not one he deemed as good as whatever deal he's agreed to in Turkey).
Depending on Coleman's aspirations, I think it would have made a lot of sense for him to wait a year for Europe and instead join up with the D-League this season. It was obvious judging from the Hornets' usage of him in Summer League that he'll more than likely need to focus on becoming adept at running an offense before he gets a legitimate NBA look and the D-League would have been able to give him that opportunity.