10 College Basketball Players Not Living Up to Their Preseason Hype
The recipe for preseason hype in college basketball is a simple one, with only a few key ingredients: hope and expectation, in large amounts. Despite this simple formula, the dish can often turn out tasting pretty bland.
The information we use to hype up players heading into a season derives mostly from past performance and then trying to extrapolate what that will mean for the future. It's by no means an exact science, which is why every season we have some highly praised players fall far short of projections.
The 2015-16 season is still in its early stages, but with more than a month of action in the books there are several hyped players who aren't living up to the lofty billing. This doesn't mean they won't eventually get there, but at this point their performances have left something (often a lot) to be desired.
Check out our list of 10 college basketball players who, so far, haven't warranted the preseason hype.
Antonio Blakeney, LSU
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While fellow LSU freshman Ben Simmons has been as great as advertised, he wasn't the only hyped newcomer the Tigers brought in. Antonio Blakeney was a 5-star prospect who 247Sports rated as the No. 16 overall player in the 2015 recruiting class and the nation's third-best shooting guard.
Effective shooting hasn't been a part of his repertoire yet.
The 6'4" guard averages 11.5 points but is shooting just 36.5 percent from the field. His three-point rate is 31 percent.
Blakeney might have been trying to do too much while LSU was waiting to get senior guard Keith Hornsby back from injury. Hornsby missed the first seven games while recovering from sports hernia surgery. Since his return he's scoring a team-high 19.7 points and is shooting 44.4 percent from outside.
Jalen Brunson, Villanova
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Coach Jay Wright's knack for finding and developing top backcourt talent made the pairing with Jalen Brunson a hotly anticipated one for 2015-16. The 6'2" point guard from Illinois was expected to make such an instant impact that it prompted Dylan Ennis to transfer to Oregon for his final season rather than compete for minutes.
A "freshman playing ahead of his years, Brunson has a great feel and understands the game, with a knack for making the right decision," per ESPN's Jay Bilas.
Villanova's guard-heavy rotation as a whole has been hit-and-miss with its shooting, particularly from three-point range, where it's making 31 percent of its three-point tries. That's the same rate Brunson is at, and his overall efficiency isn't much better at 40 percent.
Brunson is averaging 10.5 points per game, fourth-best on the team, but two of his three lowest-scoring efforts have come in Villanova's loss. That includes a 3-of-13 performance (including 0-of-5 from three) for six points against Oklahoma in Hawaii.
Cheick Diallo, Kansas
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For the amount of attention Cheick Diallo's eligibility battle received, you would have thought Kansas was being denied the greatest recruit in college basketball history. Instead the Jayhawks have another promising big man, but like Cliff Alexander a year earlier he's one who still has a lot of work to do to be considered a complete player.
Diallo, a 6'9" forward from Mali whose time at a New York prep school prompted the NCAA to drag its feet on clearing him this fall, has contributed 7.0 points, 3.4 rebounds and 1.4 blocks per game in five contests while playing 11.6 minutes per night. He's shooting 53.8 percent but has attempted only 26 shots.
He scored 13 points, six rebounds and three blocks in 16 minutes in his college debut on Dec. 1 against Loyola (Maryland) and had 12 points against Holy Cross. The other three games he's scored a combined 10 points in 24 minutes, held to seven minutes apiece in closer games against Harvard and Oregon State.
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Eron Harris, Michigan State
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Transfers have become so prevalent in college basketball that it's hard to keep track of the reasons why players choose to leave the program they signed with to go elsewhere. For Eron Harris, he decided after a strong sophomore season at West Virginia in 2013-14 that he wanted to be closer to his Indianapolis home.
He ended up at Michigan State, and after sitting out last season the 6'3" guard is ready to be a key player on a Spartans team that had an opening in the backcourt with the graduation of Travis Trice.
Instead, Harris has come off the bench in all 12 games, his 16.3 minutes per game nearly half of what he played at West Virginia and his 7.0 points per game way down from 17.2 two seasons ago. Bryn Forbes and Lourawls Nairn Jr. have gotten the bulk of the minutes alongside Denzel Valentine, with Forbes serving as the sharpshooter than Harris was supposed to be.
Harris has made 10-of-29 three-pointers, missing the four he's taken over the past two games.
Chase Jeter, Duke
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It's not very often that Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski lands a big-name prospect who doesn't live up to the hype, and Chase Jeter probably eventually will. But the No. 15 player in the 2015 recruiting class (per 247Sports) looks like he's a long ways from being a major contributor at the college level.
Bringing along a player slowly isn't a bad thing, but ones that come in with as much hype as Jeter don't usually need much time to get acclimated. And the Blue Devils need him to be ready now, down to just seven rotation players and three in the frontcourt after senior forward Amile Jefferson suffered a foot injury that will keep him out at least a month.
Through 11 games, the 6'10" Jeter is playing only 8.9 minutes per game, scoring 2.3 points with 2.2 rebounds. Most of his minutes have come in non-critical situations, which was why the Blue Devils used him for only six minutes and earlier this month against Indiana he never saw the court.
"He isn't yet capable of playing and thinking with the speed and physicality high-major basketball requires," Laura Keeley of the News & Observer wrote.
Skal Labissiere, Kentucky
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He was one of two freshmen who made regular appearances on preseason All-American teams, along with LSU's Ben Simmons, the next star big man who John Calipari has brought to Kentucky. And though he continues to sit high on nearly every 2016 NBA draft big board, Skal Labissiere has so far looked like a project who will fail just as much as he'll succeed during what is very likely to be his only season of college.
The 6'11" forward, a native of Haiti who bounced around from school to school during his prep years, is averaging 9.8 points, 3.6 rebounds and 2.1 blocks in 21.5 minutes per game. Those numbers would look better if Labissiere had been part of Kentucky's platoon system last season, but this year they look rather pedestrian. Certainly not for someone that NBADraft.net has as the No. 5 pick in 2016.
Many experts projected a monster year for Labissiere, but at least one cautioned that his circuitous route from school to school after coming to the U.S. might impact his play this season.
"The only question is whether barely playing competitive basketball for the past two years will hinder him in some way," CBS Sports' Gary Parrish wrote.
Malik Newman, Mississippi State
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One of the most prolific scorers on the prep and AAU circuit, Malik Newman's decision to play for Mississippi State drew major headlines. It was the first sign that former UCLA coach Ben Howland, recently hired by MSU, still had some great recruiting chops since he pulled the 6'3" guard away from Kentucky and other big-name programs.
The No. 8 overall prospect in 2015 and the top point guard prospect was almost solely responsible for the Bulldogs being picked to finish eighth in the SEC after finishing 6-12 in league play last season. But based on how Newman and MSU have looked in going 5-5 (with losses to Southern and Missouri-Kansas City), an eighth-place finish is unlikely.
Newman is scoring a respectable 12.3 points per game, which is third-best on the team, but he's doing it on just 37.8 percent shooting.
Josh Perkins, Gonzaga
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A broken jaw suffered five games into his freshman season sidelined Josh Perkins the rest of last year, and the 6'3" guard ended up taking a medical redshirt. He wasn't able to play alongside Kevin Pangos but could still learn from him in practice and while on the bench, experience that figured to put him in position to take Pangos' place.
He's done that by default, serving as Gonzaga's starting point guard in all 12 games, but he's not performing like his predecessor.
Even after a career-high 17 points, including five three-pointers in Monday's win over Pepperdine, Perkins is averaging 9.2 points and 3.5 assists while shooting 39 percent from three-point range. Most troubling is that his assist-to-turnover ratio is only 1.26-to-1.
Most of Gonzaga's offense has come from forwards Kyle Wiltjer and Domantas Sabonis, but in order for the Bulldogs to be a more complete team it needs Perkins to join that mix both as a scorer and distributor.
Malik Pope, San Diego State
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One of the most highly rated players to ever sign with San Diego State, injuries slowed him at the end of his high school career and contributed to a low-key freshman season in 2014-15. But his upside—which led to at least one projection midway through last year that he was a first-round NBA draft pick if he turned pro—made him a prime candidate for many breakout player lists, such as the one CBS Sports' Jon Rothstein compiled in April.
"The 6'10" forward scored in double figures only four times as a freshman, but has serious offensive potential and shot an impressive 40.8 percent from three-point range," Rothstein wrote.
We're still waiting for that potential to be production. Through 12 games, Pope is averaging a paltry 5.4 points in 20.9 minutes, up only slightly from his 5.1 average as a freshman. His three-point efficiency has plummeted to 21.6 percent and he's shooting 29.1 percent overall.
Taurean Prince, Baylor
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Taurean Prince led Baylor in scoring last season, at 13.9 points per game, a feat made more impressive by the fact he wasn't one of the Bears' starters. Arguably the top sixth man in the country in 2014-15, his impending move into the starting lineup put him in line to have a big leap in production as a senior.
Except it hasn't.
The 6'7" forward has started all 10 of Baylor's games, and while the team as a whole scores 13.3 points more than a year ago Prince is only up a bit to 14.6 per game. That's second behind Rico Gathers' 14.9 average.
Prince's shooting touch has escaped him so far, going from 47.2 percent last season to 39.8.
All statistics courtesy of Sports-Reference.com.
Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.
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