The Year Of The 'Tweener

It’s probably true that in this space over the past few months I’ve spent much more time pontificating about obscure French philosophers, junior high science fairs and my own internal angst than I have about actual college basketball this season. OK, it’s definitely true. While I’m confident that some of it has worked, I’ll let you be the judge. And then, like any patriotic American, I will dismiss your judgment until a ruling from a higher court comes through in my favor. Like anyone who’s ever been on stage, when you have an audience that will indulge your love for smashing watermelons with a sledgehammer, you don’t go off and just tell jokes, now do you?

Still, before I give you a 2,500-word allegory for smashing watermelons and how it relates to the coaching situation at Texas Tech (it really does, you know), it occurs to me that tomorrow we are one month from the tip-off of the NCAA tournament, the ultimate conclusion of the entire college basketball season and also the greatest thing ever in the history of the universe. To me, at least. Some people may prefer the World Cup. But these people are principally dangerous subversives.

In thinking about what I should say that is both (a) on topic for a change and (b) not (1) obscurest basketball nerdism or (2) based on some mathematical algorithm that I don’t actually understand and will subsequently have to explain to you so as to make it illustrative, I can with confidence tell you that none of the players you will hear listed this year as Player of the Year candidates in college basketball will be a traditional, near-seven-foot back-to-the-basket center. The reason? This season, there don’t appear to be any.

To be sure, there are plenty of big, tall players and a couple of dominant centers and back-to-the-basket players. The best player on the nation’s best team (Saturday’s upset loss doesn’t change that fact), for example, is Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger], a small house disguised as a college freshman whose ginormous backside elicits regular odes of admiration from grown men. Sullinger plays a punishing inside game, mostly backing his man down using aforementioned rump, sealing his defender off and then laying the ball in when it’s thrown to him a foot and a half from the rim. But Sullinger is in a small group of elite big men this go around. In a year where overall elite NBA-caliber talent appears to be down across college hoops, the most barren area seems to be inside the paint. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

College basketball has, for the better part of a quarter century, been primarily a guard dominated game. Don’t believe me? In the last 15 years, only a three-year stretch from 2003–05 had the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player at center. Much of this is due to the fact that, during this period, anyone who was at least 6-foot-9, could run and chew gum at the same time or, honestly, just run, was sucked as quickly as possible into the NBA vortex. A few of these guys had stellar one-year showings, like Greg Oden at Ohio State in 2007. But a whole generation of potentially elite collegiate big men never set foot on campus or did it for such a short time that they barely registered. Thus you see NBA box score names that should have but never did appear in collegiate ones like Kendrick Perkins, Amar’e Stoudemire, Al Jefferson and Dwight Howard, just to pluck a few notable ones out of a hat.

Who knows how many potential Patrick Ewings, Hakeem Olajuwons or David Robinsons we never got to see in the NCAA tournament because they were already getting paid NBA dollars to thumb a Playstation during off-hours and attempt to block out Shaq? We’ll never know. But what we do know is that their absence, or their too-brief presence in some cases, has contributed to a lasting culture of guard-ism in collegiate basketball. That is, as college coaches are certainly always on the lookout for skilled, dominant big men, they have had to structure their offenses around the perimeter to protect their flank from NBA invasion. Some coaches, like Villanova’s Jay Wright, have made an art form of the three-guard offense. Others, like Kentucky’s John Calipari, turn to long, lanky swingmen adept at slashing to the hoop. Either way, the days of the four-surrounding-one offense are mostly over, with rare and notable exceptions.

Recruiting an elite traditional big man is a luxury in college basketball today. There are really only two ways to do it: nab a one-year rent-a-pro or take a chance on a late-blooming sleeper recruit who you hope blossoms into a pro. The former path is almost entirely only accomplished by the top 10 or so elite basketball programs, places that can afford to weather the annual turnover that can decimate a roster and leave a coach without other options. If you’re recruiting for a St. Joseph’s or even a low-tier BCS basketball school like an Auburn, you have to decide whether it’s worth the thousands of dollars and potentially hundreds of hours it takes to beat out the Kentuckys, Dukes, Kansases and the like for a guy who will probably stop going to class come the Ides of March.

With rare exceptions, these guys find it isn’t worth it. Witness how Calipari managed to get DeMarcus Cousins out of Alabama, despite the presence of high-Division 1 programs like Auburn and Alabama in Cousins’ backyard that had several years’ head start. Assuming he was headed to the NBA after one year, the resources involved made no sense. This is just one recent example, and there are many others.

So what do you do if you’re not a blueblood or a destination school? You start cutting down your expectations. This is how many of the best undersized big men end up playing and developing into ace college players. If you can’t get the 6’10” or 6’11” agile behemoth, you start looking for a bullish power forward with post moves or the too-thin kid who grew five inches in the last five months but who runs like he just got new legs (because he basically did). Then you try to teach them what they need to know to succeed in your league and beyond. Even in a basketball-crazed nation, size is still the toughest thing to find. You can train a kid to be quicker, faster or shoot better, but excepting methods of torture, you can’t make him taller.
Hopefully, you guess right, teach well and you end up with a standout interior player other teams passed on and who probably gives you an extra year or two that the NBA prospect would not. Sometimes, you’ll end up with an awkward kid who doesn’t pan out, and even in the good cases, you’re probably waiting a season or two for any payoff. That’s the recruiting biz.

But you may be asking, if it then happens that it’s the rich that get richer with elite centers, then how is good that there aren’t really any this season? In a word: parity.

In a normal year, the big dogs bring their big men to the big dance and — a few fun upsets aside — eventually wear down opponents whose only option is to try and bomb away with shooters. This bombs-away strategy generally only lasts a round, maybe two, before some combination of player fatigue, big-game jitters and the big conference school’s superior athletes win out. This plays out when the smaller, guard-oriented team struggles to maintain such a frantic pace, its shots stop falling as consistently from deep range and, lacking the bulk of the higher-seeded squad, Would-Be Upset U. simply can’t rebound enough of its misses to keep from being sent packing.

But this year, when there seem to be fewer dominant big men at the elite programs than in almost any recent year, there appears to be a special equanimity based on a lack of size in the paint. This is where having an undersized but skilled big man — probably not as hot an NBA prospect but every bit as good a college performer — can be a potential Elite Eight or even Final Four asset.

I briefly discussed the concept of the “Tweener” in a previous post. In that regard, I mixed my metaphors a bit, applying the ‘Tweener tag to what was really a bulked-up small forward. True ‘Tweeners are less likely to be ball-handlers and shooters and are more likely to be 6’5”-6’8” power forwards playing out of position in the paint. Or increasingly, as in the case of San Diego State star Kawhi Leonard, they are big men who can run the floor and still suck in rebounds like a Hoover.

These ‘Tweeners often prove more successful college players than they are in the NBA, where the elite athletes are spread over 30 teams instead of over 300. Additionally, a big body that lacks leaping ability can prove as effective in rebounding and playing interior defense as an athletic but thin player can. In the pros, that big body is invariably jumped over, muscled out or simply never played. Again, there are exceptions, but they are just that. It’s important to note that not all the players discussed herein are ‘Tweeners, and not all the top ‘Tweeners are necessarily covered here.

To bring this whole issue into statistical focus, as of Sunday, only one of the nation’s top 15 rebounders lists at 6’10” or bigger: Norfolk State’s Kyle O’Quinn. The rest are almost all either power forwards or small-school undersized centers, including Augustine Runit, a runty 6’6” freshman center at South Alabama. Sullinger — the best big man in a big conference — is right there, too, at just over 10 boards a game. Contrast that with the NBA’s top 15 rebounders, where just three are under 6’10” (All three are listed at 6’9”). Last year, eight of the top 15 picks in the NBA draft were listed at 6’9” or taller. Not all of these were traditional centers, but all were principally back-to-the-basket offensive players. This year, things will likely be quite different.

But one of the biggest fallacies in college basketball coverage is that NBA talent is an accurate metric of NCAA success. The two levels are fundamentally different, but the blurring of the two has become default analysis for basketball pundits. It’s true that each of the national champions in the modern era has featured at least one and usually more than one future NBA player. But the NCAA tournament is not solely about crowning a champion, at least not to die-hards like me. Some schools this year will probably reach never-attained-in-school-history heights, while others will make a bit of history, even if just for one game. And in looking over the winnowing field of probable or potential NCAA teams, it’s eye opening to see which teams out there possess not just talented scorers in the backcourt, an essential but more readily available resource, but skilled and potentially game-changing post players.

In addition to the biggest names, there are a few big men you may not have heard as much about because they either play in off-the-radar locales or their backsides haven’t earned such big-time acknowledgement yet. And if you’re looking for a few teams that may be good NCAA picks in your bracket, take a look at some of the teams these guys play for.

The Big Boys

• Jared Sullinger, F/C, Ohio State: As mentioned, an emerging choice for national Player of the Year due to his all-around interior abilities. A consensus prep All-American, Sullinger hasn’t skipped a beat at the college level and could be the kind of player to carry a team on his back to the Final Four. Details: 6’9”, 280 lbs., Fr.

• JaJuan Johnson, F/C, Purdue: A consistent scorer and shot-blocker for Big Ten power Purdue, Johnson is the opposite of Sullinger — long and lean. A terrific shooter on the blocks, Johnson has picked up the slack for the Boilermakers, who are without the injured senior leader Robbie Hummel. JJ recently had a seven-game streak of 20 or more points snapped, showing just how effective he has been. Details: 6’10”, 216 lbs., Sr.

• Marcus and Markieff Morris, F/C, Kansas: Having a tough, skilled center is a great thing, and Kansas has the rare luxury of having more than one. Two of those are identical twins. The Morris twins both rebound and score, though Marcus is often considered the more dangerous scorer of the two. Combined with backup Thomas Robinson, the Jayhawks front line is frightening because unlike most teams, they can withstand an off game from a post player (or two). These two are a big reason Kansas will be one of the favorites to cut down the nets in April. Details: Marcus — 6’9”, 235 lbs., Jr. / Markieff — 6’10”, 245 lbs., Jr.

Big Boys with Small Reps

• Kawhi Leonard, F, San Diego State: Saying that Leonard has a small rep is probably grossly misrepresenting what he and his Aztec teammates have accomplished this season, reaching as high as No. 4 in the polls. But Leonard isn’t on TV as much as the guys above him on this list, and while he is a legit All-American candidate, he and SDSU will likely still come into the NCAAs undervalued, despite a lofty ranking. Leonard is a mobile and deceptively athletic big man, and he eats rebounds for lunch. Details: 6’7”, 225 lbs., So.

• Jon Leuer, F, Wisconsin: Like all the Wisconsin big men, Leuer’s most dangerous weapon is his jump shot. A 45% three-point shooter, Leuer is a matchup nightmare for most teams. He’s big enough to get points around the rim and grab rebounds but versatile enough to pull other team’s forwards out to the perimeter. As a senior, Leuer’s leadership is hard to quantify. He’s seen a lot of action in the Big Ten over the last four years, and that will prove invaluable for the Badgers in the tournament. Details: 6’10”, 230 lbs., Sr.

• Trey Thompkins, F, Georgia: A classic example of the versatile ‘Tweener, Thompkins bypassed a jump to the NBA for a chance to return Georgia to the NCAA tournament after a long absence. The Bulldogs have work to do after some frustrating losses in close games in a tough SEC East, but if they can get to the Big Dance, Thompkins will be a big reason they could make a surprise run. A capable if erratic shooter to 22 feet and an intimidating defender, Thompkins won’t jump over anyone but you won’t move him off the block. He can put up 17 and 11 without breaking a sweat. Details: 6’9″, 247 lbs., Jr.

Under-known Over-achievers

• Keith Benson, C, Oakland: From the Summit League’s best team comes one of the nation’s best centers. Benson has been getting better for three straight years and has emerged as a legit NBA prospect as a senior. Long and playing the game with a high energy, Benson could be the kind of player that some of the lower-seeded BCS schools have no matchup for, especially in a season with such a dearth of big men. Just ask Tennessee, who saw him drop 26 and 10 in a loss to Oakland at home. But first, Oakland has to get to the Big Dance. Details: 6’11”, 225 lbs., Sr.

• Jamie Skeen, F/C, Virginia Commonwealth: Like Benson, Skeen plies his trade at a mid-major level, but he’s done so at a high level all year. VCU beat UCLA in the fall, but will be sweating on Selection Sunday unless they can earn the CAA automatic bid. Bulky and experienced, Skeen will be a handful for any team in the postseason. Details: 6’9”, 240 lbs., Sr.

• Lavoy Allen, C, Temple: Allen was lightly recruited out of high school but has been good since he stepped onto the Temple campus four years ago. He’s a lanky rebounder and has sneaky offensive skills around the rim. Allen hasn’t performed as well as a senior as some expected, but he was coming on strong before being sidelined last weekend by a bum ankle. Assuming his ankle heals, and Temple continues its push to the NCAA tournament, Allen could give some high-profile schools a glimpse of what they missed out on when they overlooked him coming out of high school. Details: 6’9″, 225 lbs., Sr.

While there’s no guarantee any of the guys listed above will perform on the biggest stage, all have the kind of toughness, hard-to-guard game and take-over capabilities that make for tough outs come March. That nearly all are not traditional seven-foot giants is reason to expect that this year’s NCAA tournament will offer some surprises and a few breakout stars. Expect that the Final Four will feature teams that have the ability play inside-out as well as outside-in, and any of the players I’ve highlighted above could be household names come Final Four weekend in the Year of the ‘Tweener.

Originally from Kentucky, JL Weill now writes from Washington, DC. His take on politics, culture and sports can be found at The New Deterrence and on Twitter.

Photo by SD Dirk, from Twitter.