What if I told you the favorites to win college basketball’s Player of the Year award was a freshman, a guy who didn’t play basketball for most of last season and a guy who averaged four points a game two years ago?
It sounds like the makings of an ESPN 30-for-30 documentary, but the fact is that’s where we are in the 2014-15 college basketball season. Those players are, in order, Duke’s Jahlil Okafor, Notre Dame’s Jerian Grant and Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminsky.
My favorite to win the award is Grant, who has transformed into arguably the best game manager in college basketball. The Notre Dame senior was dismissed from the team last season due to academic problems. He was averaging 19 points and 6.2 assists at the time, but no one seemed to notice because the Irish looked like a mediocre team.
They were in fact much worse than an average team when Grant was dismissed, proving it by finishing 6-12 in the ACC and 15-17 overall.
Well, don’t look now, but Notre Dame is fighting for an ACC title and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament despite having a seven-man rotation, with just one of them being 6’8” or taller. This is due to the emergence of Grant as the most valuable player to his team in college basketball.
Grant’s not putting up as gaudy numbers as last season, but he’s putting up 17.4 points, 6.5 assists and 3.2 rebounds per game while shooting over 51 percent from the field. This is thanks to the offense Notre Dame coach Mike Brey has used this season. Essentially, the Irish are eliminating a post presence and spreading the floor.
When Grant has the ball on the wing, the Irish will put Demetrius Jackson, V.J. Beachem and Pat Connaughton, all of whom shoot at least 44 percent from deep, on the other side of the floor. The big man for Notre Dame will then come set a ball screen for Grant, allowing one of three things to happen.
First, Grant can look to attack, either getting to the rim or pulling up for a mid-range jumper. If that’s not there, Grant can play the old-school pick-and-roll game with his big man, looking for him cutting to the basket after setting the screen. The last option is if a defender is bold enough to help out in the paint, leaving one of the three shooters open on the other side of the floor.
Notre Dame could be susceptible to a flop come March, but that won’t be because of Grant. It will be because Notre Dame hardly plays defense and there’s no depth to the team. What Grant can control though is his assist to turnover ratio, which is over 3:1. An even more ridiculous number when you think Grant isn’t a point guard by trade.
Grant’s stock is skyrocketing in mock drafts, with NBADraft.net having him going No. 19 overall to Chicago. Maybe taking almost a year off of basketball is the college equivalent of going to Germany to rehab an injury?