For better or worse, next year’s team is going to be different. The departing seniors are taking 58% of our points, 48% of our rebounds, and 43% of our minutes played when they pack the vans next month .It’s going to be weird watching us and not having Malcolm Brogdon be prominently involved. I don’t remember what that’s like, but I don’t think I liked it as much.
It’s easy to overreact in either direction when you think about next season. It’s really easy — trust me — to get super-hyped about our incoming recruiting class, and perhaps at the expense of guys who’ve been around, soaking up ACC experience and getting built up by Mike Curtis. On the other hand, you can look no further than my 2015 preseason predictions — where I anointed Evan Nolte our starting small forward (he started one game) and called for a breakout year from Mike Tobey as our second starting big — to see the dangers of leaning too hard in the direction of age and experience. The truth is, next year’s team will be a mixture of young and old, and none of us know exactly who will play or how much.
The only guys I’m positive will start and play heavy (think 32-35) minutes are London Perrantes and Austin Nichols.
Perrantes will be the team’s only scholarship (respect to Jeff Jones) senior in 2017, and as the holdover from 89 wins over three years and that culture of success, this will be his team to mold how he sees fit.
LP took major steps forward in 2016, increasing his usage rate from 15.5% to 19.3%, the number of possessions he finished with a shot from 13.8% to 18.2%, and doing so without losing efficiency (his offensive rating of 117.7 was a career-high) or becoming less trusty with the ball (his turnover rate of 18.6% was a career-low). He hit 78 threes at a 48.7% clip, only dipping under 50% in the final weeks of the season. I’ve posited this opinion since last season, but here it is again: London will be our leading scorer next season. He’s got much more of an all-around offensive game than we’ve consistently seen him display in his first three seasons, and I think we’ll see a lot more of it (particularly his nifty array of floaters and pull-ups between the rim and three point line) surface more frequently without as many high profile mouths to feed. He probably won’t hit 48.7% of his threes again without Malcolm and AG to draw the defense, but I could see him scoring 15 points per game.
Getting Nichols was a bigger deal than I feel like our fanbase as a whole has recognized. Adding a five star recruit with two years of eligibility remaining who scored 13.3 points per game and shot 63.7% at the rim while blocking more than three shots (12.5% of opposing tries) per game at a major conference school is cause for celebration. Nichols gives us a Gill-esque interior option on offense (right down to the inconsistent-but-at-least-present jumper) and the best shot blocker we’ve seen in a long time. If London isn’t our leading scorer, he will be, and I think he’ll endear himself to our fans in no time once they actually get to see him on the court.
London and Nichols will be joined in the starting lineup by two wings and a big. Isaiah Wilkins (21 starts), Devon Hall (20), Darius Thompson (10) and Marial Shayok (eight) combined for 49 starts this season, so they’re where I’ll start looking. Wilkins is a lock to start and play a heavy role, but picking two wings is harder than I thought. We saw the advantage of playing three guys with point guard skills at times this year — Devon, Malc, and LP combined for 21 assists against Iowa State, for example — and Darius could pair with Devon and London to give us a semblance of the same approach next season. Marial, however, is a one on one offensive force like no one else on the roster, capable of getting to the basket in what feels like two strides and able to use his long arms to rise over defenders trying to contest. With Malcolm gone, we’re going to need a player capable of bulldozing to the rim, and Marial’s the most likely candidate. I think Marial and Devon (who will need to become more consistently aggressive) will be the choices.
Marial had a rough year, but he gets a pass for (at least) half of it because of the wrist injury and concussion he suffered in December. He rallied in March, posting three double digit scoring efforts and playing heady, aggressive defense. When he’s at his best, he offers three point shooting (40% plus in both seasons on Grounds), a difficult to stop dribble drive attack, and an eye for sharing (12 games of multiple assists, a 13.8% assist rate). He also plays defense like a giant squid, so he’s the guy I’d most like to be stapled to our opponents’ best perimeter guy every night.
Wilkins led the team in defensive box score plus/minus by a tremendous amount, blocking shots (5%), manning up, and defending pick and rolls better than anyone else on the roster. He’s not a great rebounder yet (15.7% DREB, 9.6% OREB) and his place in the offense wavered on a game by game basis, but when he’s on and in rhythm with his teammates, he’s a very good midrange shooter (41.8% on two point Js this season) and passer from the high post (a 12.4% assist rate) who should compliment Nichols well. He’ll be a big piece next year, especially if the jumpers go in a little more and he develops a fake and drive game.
Hall matured tremendously over the course of this season, and having him on the court as the aforementioned third guy with point guard skills (a 15.8% assist rate, solid handles and decisions) really seemed to benefit us as the season went on (I had to choke that sentence out, given how the season ended). He became a sound defender (sticking with some impressive shooters in the NCAAs), and particularly impressed me by skying over bigger guys for defensive boards. He’s most likely to be surpassed by someone else (Darius? Guy?) because of his inconsistency — for everything I love about him, he’s very deferential and tended to disappear for games at a time. Of these three, he has the furthest to go to make a leap as an upperclassman.
Assuming CTB sticks with his preferred nine man rotation, we have to somehow pick four of these eight guys to see limited time:
- Darius Thompson, entering his third year in the program and boasting a handful of thunder dunks and big shots to his credit.
- Kyle Guy, the 38th-ranked recruit in the country and owner of the most improvisational ability on offense we’ve seen since Sean Singletary.
- Jarred Reuter, a ground-bound but sound big man who turned me into a footwork geek in his short stints this season.
- Ty Jerome, ranked 44th nationally and the prospective heir apparent to London.
- DeAndre Hunter, an explosive wing, PA Player of the Year, and perhaps the most underrated member of this class.
- Jack Salt, who started nine games, played in 22, and grabbed 13.9% of offensive rebound chances.
- Jay Huff, who will be the best shooter on the team once he sets his bags down.
- Mamadi Diakite, a 6’9” shot blocker extraordinaire who spent last season learning the system and having his body be the latest experiment for Mike Curtis.
How all of that shakes out is pretty much impossible to forecast. This is a nice collection of talent, and you can talk yourself in a circle pretty easily. For example: I think Guy and Jerome will both eventually be better than Darius Thompson, but Darius started 10 games last season and was named by CTB in his postseason interview as a pillar of next year’s team. Jarred Reuter lacks the upside of Mamadi Diakite or Jay Huff, but Reuter is a rock of a man, a good high post player, and didn’t hurt us in his time on the court this season. Jack Salt’s debut season looked like he’d walked in to the wrong party for the most part, but that doesn’t mean that the game will always look too fast for him. There are tons of ifs and maybes with this group.
Since being wishy-washy is boring, here’s my call. Darius Thompson is a lock to get minutes. He wasn’t as good on offense (often losing confidence in his shot and disappearing instead of using his athleticism to drive) or defense (where he was more of a gambler than I think we want) as I expected him to be, but overall, his jumper was improved (he made his last five threes of the season and was passable in OOC play) from where it was at UT, and the physical skills are there for him to be a sound defender. Kyle Guy is a lock too, because if you bring a five star player to Grounds, you have to play him — especially when he’s good enough to say things like how he only wants to stay for two years. There’s no one else on the team as potentially dynamic as he is, and a player that can create offense like he can will be afforded opportunities with Malcolm, AG, and Tobey gone. If he was already 185 pounds, I’d call him a threat to start. As it is, I think he’ll play 15-20 minutes per. Reuter is likely to make the cut. While he committed 7.9 fouls per 40 minutes played as a freshman, he paid attention to both the offensive (11.4%) and defensive (15.7%) glass and displayed a deftness around the high post on offense that intrigued at least me. My last rotation guy is DeAndre Hunter. I think Hunter is almost criminally underrated at this point, as I guess the broken leg he suffered in his sophomore year of high school derailed the hype train for good. He’s explosive, he can shoot, and at 6’7” with a frame that has room to grow, I think he could possibly take on some of the Justin Anderson stretch four role that we missed last season.
The four guys I left out were all tough calls. I’m just as excited as you are to have Mamadi Diakite in uniform next year, but I can’t ignore that a.) as of his last reported weight, he’s still a collegiate big man that weighs less than 200 pounds, and b.) he started playing basketball in 2011. Coming in to a live college basketball game will be different than anything he’s ever done and will probably be a rude awakening at first. He’s (probably) not going to show up and give us 10, seven, and two blocks in 25 minutes per game.
Jay Huff is in a similar situation physically. He’s good — really good — and has one skill that would really help us, but he would probably benefit from spending a year working on his 195 pound frame, followed by showing up for the season opener in November 2017 at 225 pounds ready to rain threes on people AND take an elbow on the block.
Ty Jerome’s hip is a concern to some, but it should be fine by mid-summer. The issue here is less physical and more a question of available minutes. London Perrantes will be playing big minutes at the point, with few left to season the rook. At the other guard spot, Hall, Thompson, and Guy are all crowding the depth chart. If he doesn’t redshirt, he’ll still have to beat out Guy or one of the returnees to find his way into the rotation. It’s possible — remember, we haven’t seen incoming talent like this — but not super likely.
Jack Salt, bless his heart, was probably the easiest choice to fall out. He’ll play some because he’s 6’11” and we’ll sometimes need his height and physicality against opponents with that kind of size, but his play this season felt like he’s a year away from being a year away from being a consistent contributor.
All I can tell you for sure is that I’m excited to have all 13 of these guys on the roster next season, and that watching this talent come together will be a wild, fun, ride. Sign me up.
