College Basketball Stars We Wish Were on the Same Team in 2016-17

We've reached the point of college basketball's ridiculously long offseason that we're starting to hallucinate. It's been so long since games were played it's hard to remember who's graduated or turned pro and who's coming back, not to mention if any of them have changed teams thanks to transfer loopholes. And then there are the new additions, many of whom will be instantly successful (before quickly leaving for the pros).

It's basically just one big pile of personnel that will get sorted out once practices get underway in a few weeks and the 2016-17 season begins in mid-November. Until then, there's still plenty of idle time to fill, and our latest offseason exercise is orchestrating some fun roster swaps.

Going under the assumption that players could be traded at the college level—the heck with amateurism!—these are the pairings that we'd love to see playing together this upcoming season.

Damon Lynn and Monte Morris

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NJIT's Damon Lynn could set the NCAA career three-point record if paired with a strong passer.

With 349 made three-pointers in three seasons, Damon Lynn is the active NCAA leader in that category and has an outside chance of the Division I career record. He'd need 156 in his senior year to pass Oakland's Travis Bader, which is 33 more than Lynn has had in any single season.

What might help the NJIT volume shooter is being able to have the ball fed to him by an experienced, accurate and careful distributor. Someone like Monte Morris, who is well on his way to having the best assist-to-turnover ratio in college basketball history.

Morris has recorded 551 assists with only 123 turnovers in three seasons at Iowa State, a 4.48-to-1 ratio that's well ahead of the NCAA career record of 3.01 set by Wisconsin's Jordan Taylor from 2009-12. Morris is already in the record books for the best single-season mark, 4.79, as a freshman in 2013-14.

Lynn loves to shoot, especially from deep, having attempted 982 threes in his career, though often he's had to create his own shot, and that's partly why he's only a 35.5 percent three-point shooter. With Morris dishing to him that rate is sure to go up, and if he still takes as many shots, the career and single-season record (162, by Davidson's Steph Curry in 2007-08) would be in jeopardy.

Evan Bradds and Thomas Bryant

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Indiana's Thomas Bryant shot 68.3 percent as a freshman in 2015-16.

There are certain players that, when the ball gets in their hands, and they decide to shoot, it's almost automatic. Last year, Evan Bradds and Thomas Bryant were among that group as two of only six Division I players who made better than 70 percent of their two-point shots.

Bradds led the nation in overall field-goal shooting, at 71.2 percent, while Bryant's 68.3 percent accuracy would have ranked second had he taken enough shots to qualify. The 6'10” Bryant was rarely better than the fourth scoring option on a loaded Indiana team last season and ended up attempting only 6.6 shots per game, a number that figures to go up during his sophomore year.

Belmont turned to the 6'7” Bradds a little more often, resulting in 9.2 shots per game as a junior, and he led the Bruins in scoring (17.6 points per game) despite teammate Craig Bradshaw taking 104 more shots.

An ideal team has everyone on the court be someone who is capable of doing damage on offense, but if Bradds and Bryant were paired up, they could take care of most of the scoring. And with their efficiency, opponents would have to overload on them, which would open up teammates to contribute.

Rodney Bullock and Jordan Johnson

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Providence's Rodney Bullock is in need of someone to get the ball to him.

Rodney Bullock was the third-leading scorer and No. 2 rebounder for Providence last season, averaging 11.4 points and 6.8 rebounds along with a team-high 47 blocks. But playing alongside Ben Bentil and Kris Dunn, he was often the forgotten member of that trio.

Bentil and Dunn have departed, leaving Bullock in search of someone to team up with for him to have a breakthrough year like he showed he was capable of at times in 2015-16. Bleacher Report's Kerry Miller noted that he helped take over for Dunn—from a production standpoint—when the guard missed a few games last season, and if he had someone to play off of it would benefit the 6'7” junior forward greatly.

Jordan Johnson knows how to make those around him look better, having averaged 8.1 assists per game last season as a freshman at Milwaukee. The 5'9” guard, who also scored 12.5 points per game, assisted on 41.2 percent of the Panthers' made field goals when he was on the court, a rate that was fourth-best in Division I.

Third on that list last year was Dunn, who Johnson would effectively replace as the guy feeding Bullock and creating a fearsome pair. He transferred to UNLV and will be eligible to play again in 2017-18.

Luke Kornet and Alec Peters

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Valparaiso's Alec Peters is one of a small group of players of his size who can score from all over.

Alec Peters is arguably the best player in the country not playing in a power conference, something he could have changed after completing his undergraduate degree. But rather than go the graduate transfer route, as so many other players of his ilk have, the 6'9” forward took to heart advice he got from NBA teams about how he could best improve his reputation.

"Be a guy at a mid-major school next year that’s dominating at my level," Peters said, per NBC Sports' Rob Dauster. "Show that I can put up 20 and 10 and dominate a game against a bigger opponents when we play them. Lead my team farther into the NCAA tournament this year."

While staying with Valparaiso is an admirable move, selfishly we'd have loved to see Peters playing for a more high-profile program. A natural choice would have been Vanderbilt, where former Crusaders coach Bryce Drew is now in charge. And it's there that he could create one of the greatest set of matchup nightmares in the college game.

Just as Peters is capable of hitting shots from all over, having shot 50.5 percent overall and 44 percent from three-point range last year, so too has 7-footer Luke Kornet. In three years at Vanderbilt, he's made 97 threes, peaking at 40 percent as a sophomore, while last season he vastly boosted his rebounding numbers to 7.3 per game in just 27.4 minutes of action.

How do you guard two big men who can stretch the floor? It's hard enough to deal with one of them.

Tyler Cavanaugh and Melo Trimble

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Maryland's Melo Trimble may have to carry his team this season, unless he gets some help.

George Washington won the NIT championship in April but its offseason hasn't been full of celebration. An investigation into allegations that coach Mike Lonergan verbally abused players led the school to fire him in mid-September.

Left to deal with this sudden change is a roster that lost three starters but includes its best all-around player from last season, 6'9” forward Tyler Cavanaugh. He transferred to the Colonials from Wake Forest because of Lonergan, and now he probably wishes he could finish up somewhere else.

Why not out of Washington, D.C., and into the suburbs, specifically College Park, Maryland, where there happens to be a pretty good guard who is facing a lean 2016-17 season after most of his teammates either graduated or turned pro.

Melo Trimble's return to Maryland for his junior season comes after a disappointing sophomore year, one that lowered his NBA draft stock. It could go down even more for the 6'3” Trimble unless he has a monster season on what could be a subpar team, but Cavanaugh would give the Terrapins a much better chance to make a third straight NCAA tournament.

Jawun Evans and Peter Jok

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Peter Jok loves to shoot, but he doesn't have anyone on Iowa's roster that he can rely on to get him the ball this season.

Before getting hurt in early February, Jawun Evans was putting together a heck of a freshman year that saw him average 12.9 points, 4.4 rebounds and 4.9 assists per game. After the 6'0” guard went down for the season, Oklahoma State lost nine of its last 10 games and finished with its first 20-loss season since 1986-87.

What made Evans so effective for the Cowboys was his ability to make plays himself or for others, assisting on 41.9 percent of shots made when he was in action. New OSU coach Brad Underwood will look to maximize this part of Evans' game, but it would help if he had a player who liked to shoot and made his fair share.

Enter Peter Jok. Last season with Iowa, the 6'6” guard shot 40.2 percent from three-point range and took 17.9 shots per 40 minutes. Only Jarrod Uthoff shot more often and Dom Uhl more accurately from deep, while only the latter is returning with Jok for 2016-17.

Jok thrived in Iowa's system because both Anthony Clemmons and Mike Gesell were willing and able to get him the ball in a good spot. Evans could do the same.

Josh Hawkinson and Denzell Taylor

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Washington State's Josh Hawkinson has averaged double figures in rebounding each of the past two seasons.

Josh Hawkinson has managed to put up some good numbers despite being on a trio of really bad Washington State teams, particularly when it comes to defensive rebounding. Last year, the 6'10” forward collected 31.7 percent of defensive rebounds when in action, the fourth-best rate in the country, and there were a lot to grab because the Cougars' opponents took 1,300 shots as WSU went 9-22.

Old Dominion won 25 games, knocking off Oakland in the finals of the first-ever Vegas 16 postseason tournament, and as important as Trey Freeman's scoring was to that championship run, so too was Denzell Taylor's fondness for pulling down offense boards.

The 6'7” Taylor was third in Division I in offensive rebound percentage, at 17.1 percent, with nearly 56 percent of his boards coming after a teammate missed a shot.

Envision a team where Hawkinson cleans up after helping to force a bad shot, then starting a break that might lead with a transition basket or, if things slow down, there's solace in knowing Taylor will keep the possession alive with an offensive board.

Tra-Deon Hollins and Justin Robinson

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Tra-Deon Hollins led Division I with 127 steals in 2015-16.

Think those choreographed dances that Monmouth's “Bench Mob” made famous last season were fun? Imagine if those subs had another electric guard paired with Justin Robinson and making celebration-worthy plays all over the court?

Robinson often started and finished the plays for the Hawks, many of his 79 steals helping to start a break where the ball would end up in his hands for a layup (and then a spirited reaction from the bench). The 5'8” guard scored 19.3 points per game and shot 43.9 percent from the field, but he was also the only Monmouth player to average more than two assists so he was often doing it all on his own.

Tra-Deon Hollins can relate. The 6'2” guard was Omaha's leading assist man in addition to recording a Division I-leading 127 steals, nearly recording a triple-double in January when he had 23 points, 13 assists and eight steals against IPFW.

With that duo and their fast hands messing with ball-handlers all over the court, the opportunity for quick-change possessions and fast-break scoring would be through the roof. And so would the need for the Bench Mob to come up with a bunch of new skits.

All statistics courtesy of Sports-Reference.com, unless otherwise noted. All recruiting information courtesy of 247Sports.com, unless otherwise noted.

Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.