Ranking the Best 'Glue Guys' in College Basketball in 2016-17 Season
"Glue guy" is a nebulous term that means different things to different people. As the phrase suggests, it refers to a player whose presence holds the team together, helping the team function as a single unit, rather than five individuals.
The glue guy may provide a service that is otherwise lacking, such as a physical inside presence, floor leadership or standout defensive play. Often a glue guy's influence is not immediately obvious, but it becomes noticeable over the course of several games or if he is unavailable.
Sometimes the team's best player is the glue guy, but it is often someone else. The glue guy may not get the most publicity, but he is essential to a team's success. Although it is difficult to describe in words what a glue guy does, you know one when you see one, and most top teams have such a player.
Assessments of glue guys can vary widely from one observer to the next, because their contributions are subtle and often lack statistical substantiation.
Some teams, such as Wisconsin, have a roster full of glue guys, making it virtually impossible to choose any one player from that squad.
Nonetheless, we forge ahead, presenting our evaluation of college basketball's top 10 glue guys this season. The rankings are based on the players' qualities as a glue guy and not on their overall basketball talent.
10. Jalen Brunson, Villanova
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Josh Hart is Villanova's star, the player in the running for National Player of the Year honors. But it is point guard Jalen Brunson who holds the Wildcats together.
The previous four seasons, Ryan Arcidiacono was the man behind the curtain pulling the strings to make everything work as Villanova's glue guy while newcomer Brunson played a subordinate role. With Arcidiacono gone, Brunson has assumed that role as a sophomore.
Some people consider Mikal Bridges as Villanova's glue guy, and he certainly lifts the team with his athletic presence. But take Brunson out of the picture and the Villanova machine slows perceptibly.
"Jalen Brunson brings continuity as a handler," wrote Jordan Cornette of Campus Insiders.
Brunson is often omitted from "glue guys" lists because he is bordering on star status. He is averaging 14.6 points, and he totaled 50 points in two of the Wildcats' most challenging games—road contests against Creighton and Butler.
Nonetheless, Brunson is the player who shapes Villanova's offense and defense, molding the Wildcats into a single unit. He scores when he needs to score, passes when he needs to pass, pushes the pace when it needs to be pushed and slows things down when patience is needed. He still fits the definition of a glue guy.
9. Sanjay Lumpkin, Northwestern
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Sometimes you wonder why Sanjay Lumpkin is on the floor. He seldom scores and is rarely a part of the Northwestern offense. He scored a total of two points combined in the Wildcats' last two games, against Minnesota and Nebraska.
He has had his moments, notably the 14-point, 14-rebound effort in Northwestern's key victory over Dayton. Generally, though, Lumpkin recedes into the background, averaging just 6.8 points and 6.9 rebounds.
But the fact remains, Northwestern has a chance for its first NCAA tournament berth in school history with Lumpkin in its starting lineup.
While the contributions of some glue guys are obvious, Lumpkin's impact is more subtle. Certainly his perimeter defense is helpful, and having a player who does not need the ball in his hands on offense has some ancillary benefits.
The bottom line is, things just seem to go better with Lumpkin in the starting lineup.
"It is hard to exactly say why," wrote Philip Rossman-Reich of 247Sports. "But Northwestern continues to throw him out there and see some measure of success with him out there. It may be hard to quantify exactly what Lumpkin's impact is. And the negative may still outweigh the positive in certain situations... but Lumpkin still has a role to play this season."
Lumpkin is now a fifth-year senior, loaded with the experience needed to fill the nebulous role of complementary player. He makes the hustle plays, both in practice and in the game, providing the example others will follow.
Collins identified Lumpkin's importance three years ago.
"Sanjay is our glue guy," Collins told Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune in 2013. "He will be our defensive stopper and can guard multiple positions. He can handle (the ball) a little, can make a shot, score inside. He has a nose for the ball."
8. Maurice Watson Jr., Creighton
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Point guard Maurice Watson Jr. is among the best players in the Big East. He also is the player who controls a Creighton's offense that ranks 11th in the nation in points per game, at 87.5.
It takes a smart and talented point guard to orchestrate Creighton's uptempo style. Decisions and plays have to be made more quickly with everything moving at an accelerated pace. Watson does it well, as he creates the style that has helped lift the Bluejays to the No. 8 ranking this week.
Watson is only third on his team in scoring, but he leads the nation in assists, at 9.1 per game. He displayed all his glue-guy skills in Saturday's 78-64 road victory over Providence, when Watson had just 11 points but dished out 14 assists.
"Maurice was outstanding," Creighton coach Greg McDermott said, according to Jon Nyatawa of the Omaha World-Herald. "He's our leader. He controlled the tempo of the game, pace of the game."
Providence coach Ed Cooley also recognized the impact Watson had on the game.
"He just had everything on a string," Cooley said, according to the World-Herald. "He controlled the whole tempo of the game. He really makes that team hard to guard."
Sometimes a glue guy's contributions are subtle and difficult to detect. Sometimes they are obvious. Watson falls into the latter category.
7. Dakota Mathias, Purdue
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Purdue's strength is its frontcourt, which is one of the country's best. Power forward Caleb Swanigan gets most of the attention, and deservedly so; he anchors a front line that also includes small forward Vince Edwards and 7'2" center Isaac Haas. They are the Boilermakers' top three scorers and the team's stars.
However, Purdue has a chance to win the Big Ten because of guard Dakota Mathias. His presence provides the missing ingredients.
Following the Boilermakers' 66-55 victory over Wisconsin, Gregg Doyel of the Indianapolis Star wrote, "Mathias is the glue." He had eight points, seven assists and four rebounds against the Badgers, which are not exactly All-American numbers but the ones Purdue needed to win.
Mathias provides strong perimeter defense and outstanding outside shooting. It's the perfect recipe for a team that relies on its inside game.
Mathias is only fifth on the team in scoring, but he's second to Swanigan in minutes per game (30.4).
"The true testament to a good player is when a coach can't take you out," Purdue coach Matt Painter said after the Wisconsin game, according to the Indianapolis Star. "There's some guys who didn't play as much today as I would have liked, but you just didn't feel right taking some guys out—and (Mathias) is one of those guys."
Mathias' greatest asset is he can shoot the lights out. He has made 50 percent of his three-point shots (37-of-74), which would rank eighth in the country if he had made enough three-pointers to qualify. He was 2-of-3 from long range against Wisconsin.
Mathias also has replaced Rapheal Davis as the team’s top perimeter defender, and neither of Wisconsin's starting guards, Zak Showalter nor Bronson Koenig, reached double figures in scoring.
6. Joe Rahon, Saint Mary's
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Saint Mary's guard Joe Rahon is fourth on the team in scoring, at a measly 8.3 points per game. His shooting percentage of 42.6 is nothing to brag about either.
However, two things indicate how indispensable Rahon is to the success of the 21st-ranked Gaels.
First is his playing time. Rahon leads the team by a wide margin in time on the court, averaging 36.9 minutes. He played 40 minutes in all nine games that were not blowouts: Nevada, Dayton, UAB, Stanford, Texas-Arlington, Texas A&M Corpus Christi, Loyola Marymount, San Diego and San Francisco. He has played 159 of a possible 160 minutes in the Gaels' first four West Coast Conference games, sitting out the final minute of the BYU game after Saint Mary's had built a 15-point lead.
Coach Randy Bennett's reaction to Rahon's performance against Western Kentucky was the second indicator. Rahon went scoreless for the only time this season, missing all three of his shots.
Bennett's assessment afterward? "Joe was great," he told me while I covered the game for The Sports Xchange.
Rahon had a season-high 10 assists with just one turnover in that game and controlled the pace of the game as well as the Gaels' offensive execution.
Quite simply, every Saint Mary's player performs better when Rahon is on the court organizing things. Jock Landale is Saint Mary's star, but Rahon, who transferred from Boston College, is the player who makes the Gaels a Top 25 team.
5. London Perrantes, Virginia
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Much like Wisconsin, Virginia relies on a team full of glue guys to make its system work. However, guard London Perrantes is the player who has made it all fit together during the Cavaliers' rise to national prominence.
It is no coincidence Virginia's ascent to the top of the Atlantic Coast Conference began when Perrantes arrived.
The season before Perrantes became a member of the team, the Cavaliers finished unranked and tied for fourth in the ACC standings.
Perrantes came to Virginia in the 2013-14 season and became a starter in the third game of his freshman season. It certainly wasn't Perrantes' scoring that caused Bennett to make him his starting point guard, because Perrantes was just 2-of-21 from the field in his first six college games. Obviously, Bennett saw something in Perrantes that made the team as a whole better.
Something clicked because the Cavaliers finished alone atop the ACC standings that season and did it again in Perrantes' sophomore season. They finished just a game out of first place in Perrantes' junior year and finished in the top six of the rankings all three seasons.
The Cavaliers are a disappointing 19th in the rankings this week, but don't be too surprised if they work their way up the ACC standings and the national rankings over the next two months.
Perrantes leads the team in scoring for the first time in his four seasons at Virginia, although his 11.3 scoring average this season hardly makes him an offensive dynamo. His chief contribution is that he makes Virginia's precise offense and defense function efficiently.
Perrantes "tied it all together," Bennett told Zach Helfand of the Los Angeles Times last March. "He just stirred the pot. He made everything kind of work out. He got guys the ball. He understood it."
4. Landen Lucas, Kansas
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Landen Lucas was not good enough to contribute in his first college season, so he redshirted. He played little as a redshrt freshman and averaged less than six points as a sophomore, starting about half the games.
His breakthrough as a significant contributor came last season as a junior, and even then it took a while for coach Bill Self to recognize Lucas' importance. Self seemed to have four of the five starting positions figured out, but he could not decide on the fifth, trying several players with limited success early last season.
Following a 19-point loss to lowly Oklahoma State, Self went to his players to ask them who the fifth starter should be, according to Seth Davis' Sports Illustrated article. They all said it should be Lucas.
"They all felt that Landen understood everything we were trying to do," Self said in the Sports Illustrated piece. "So that's when I decided to start him."
The Jayhawks won 18 of their next 19 games before losing to eventual national champion Villanova in the NCAA tournament round of 16.
"We're a much smarter team when he's in there because he's as bright a player as we have," Self said.
Lucas has started about half the games this season. He is the player who does the inside dirty work—both offensively and defensively—to free up stars like Josh Jackson and Frank Mason III to make plays. Lucas is sixth on the team in scoring this season, but he leads the team in rebounding at 7.0 boards per games, despite playing just a little over 20 minutes per game.
He completes the Jayhawks.
3. Ishmail Wainright, Baylor
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Johnathan Motley has emerged as the star of Baylor's surprising rise in the rankings. However, Ish Wainright is the player who has given the Bears the consistency they lacked in recent seasons.
Part of the reason Wainright, a 6'5" senior, is so influential is his versatility, since he can play any position from point guard to power forward. But it is the sheer force of Wainright's personality that has the greatest impact on the team's success.
Ashley Hodge of 247Sports described Wainright this way: "No one is more loved and respected on the Baylor squad than Ish. His leadership and personality are invaluable in the locker room. He always has a smile on his face and is the type of guy that will do whatever the coaches need."
Wainright is just seventh on the team in scoring, averaging a mere 5.5 points, and he is not a great shooter, as his 28.6 percent three-point shooting can attest. But he can rebound (5.4 boards per game), make plays (3.8 assists per game) and play good defense (a team-high 1.7 steals per game). He is third on the team in minutes played per contest and brings the most hustle of anyone on the team. Wainright provides the intangibles needed for a team to succeed.
"He's a great leader, a great glue guy," Baylor coach Scott Drew said last March, per John Werner's Waco Tribune report. "The great thing is he's a matchup problem for the other team because he's physical down low and he can handle it and create on the perimeter."
2. Lonzo Ball, UCLA
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The glue guy typically is a complementary player who sacrifices individual glory for the sake of team success. However, there is no law that says the team's best player can't be the one that holds the team together.
That is the case at UCLA, where freshman point guard Lonzo Ball is in the discussion for National Player of the Year, but is also the player who enables the team to function as one efficient unit.
Certainly the addition of freshman forward TJ Leaf has helped the Bruins become relevant again, but it is Ball's presence that lifted a UCLA team that went 15-17 last season to one that is 16-1 and ranked No. 4 in the country.
He fills every need as his 14.7 scoring average, 52.8 shooting percentage, 5.6 rebounds and 8.0 assists indicate. But it is the assists number that stands out. Lonzo's presence has made Bryce Alford and Isaac Hamilton better players than they were last season and helped push Leaf to star status.
Last year the Bruins operated in fits and starts. This season, they function as an efficient offensive machine every game.
Aaron Torres of FoxSports.com called Ball "the glue that's brought a talented UCLA club together."
"He just, he's got that unique ability to understand winning," UCLA coach Steve Alford said on The Sidelines Podcast. "He knows who should get the ball, when, what time of the game; whether we need foul shooting or an inside basket or a three-point basket, he's just got a great feel for that."
If it looks like a glue guy, quacks like a glue guy and walks like a glue guy, it's a glue guy.
1. Amile Jefferson, Duke
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Duke forward Amile Jefferson tends to get lost amid the team's star-studded perimeter players like Luke Kennard, Grayson Allen and Jayson Tatum. However, Jefferson's experience and consistently strong inside play have provided the perfect complement to the Blue Devils' outside game.
Jefferson's rebounding as well as his unspectacular but efficient inside game at both ends of the court make the Blue Devils complete, especially with freshman big men Marques Bolden and Harry Giles still trying to find their rhythm.
Although senior guard Matt Jones also provides glue-guy qualities, it is Jefferson's style and personality that bind the squad.
Former Virginia Tech coach and current ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg tweeted early this season that Jefferson is "no glue guy!" and implied Jefferson is too talented for that tag. But that simply reflects the problem with the glue-guy label, which is often considered akin to a quarterback being described as a "game manager." Being called a glue guy tends to minimize a player's reputation as a star, but it shouldn't.
Jefferson is an outstanding player who averages 13.6 points and 10.1 rebounds. He also happens to be a glue guy, the best of both worlds.
The 6'9" Jefferson was asked to play center as a sophomore. He was asked to come off the bench as a junior. As a senior last season, he was becoming a star until a December foot injury ended his season. Jefferson's absence was particularly noticeable late in the 2015-16 season, which is when things matter most and when glue guys' contributions are illuminated. The Blue Devils lost five of their final 10 games and were ousted in the round of 16 in the NCAA tournament.
As a fifth-year senior who has played in 131 college games, including 84 starts, Jefferson described in October his role as a leader, per Jonas Pope IV of the Herald-Sun: "Making sure that our ship is running smoothly, making sure we are doing things that he (coach Mike Krzyzewski) sees fit, that follows the standards as players that our coaches have set for our group. Then it's about coming every day ready to work."
Sounds like a glue guy to me.
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