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MANHATTAN — Rodney McGruder is a different basketball player than he was 20 days ago. Not three weeks ago or a month ago, but 20 days exactly.
McGruder, Kansas State’s junior forward, doesn’t need a calendar. He remembers the day everything started to change for several reasons.
It was Christmas and he was in Hawaii with the Wildcats. They were taking on Long Beach State in the championship game of the Diamond Head Classic, and he helped them win by scoring a career-high 28 points. Most of all, he remembers entering the game with a new attitude.
“I just started being more aggressive. That’s all I can say,” McGruder said. “I wanted to be more in attack-mode, instead of just settling for threes all the time. I switched my game up a little bit.”
He’s been impressive ever since. He has averaged 21.4 points in his past five games, is coming off a 30-point effort against No. 4 Baylor and has developed into K-State’s best all-around scorer.
Instead of following a big night with a quiet game, as he was known to do, he has been consistently good. Questions about his offensive skills have disappeared.
Leading up to today’s game at Oklahoma, Wildcat coach Frank Martin mentioned him in the same sentence as former strong scorers Jacob Pullen, Denis Clemente and Michael Beasley.
“He continues to get better and better and better,” Martin said of McGruder. “We continue to see the things he’s doing. We can tinker with some of the things that we do to help him do the things that he’s doing well. He’s on the go right now. Where maybe first week in December he was maybe pressing a little bit trying to find his way … The game has slowed down for him.”
The way McGruder plays, that’s all he needed to be successful. Coming into the season, many pointed to McGruder as the person who would lead a young team that featured one scholarship senior. Some compared him to Pullen.
McGruder embraced the high expectations, but he went about achieving them in the wrong way initially. While he needed to mature into the leader Pullen was on and off the court, he didn’t have to go about scoring the way he did.
At 6-foot-4 and 205 pounds, he has a totally different playing style. He is a capable rebounder, a proven three-point shooter and a creative scorer from mid range. But he doesn’t possess unstoppable driving skills, and can be effective when the ball isn’t in his hands.
K-State is using a more balanced style this season, and its offense doesn’t have to go through him on every possession to be effective. Learning how to be the focal point of that offense wasn’t easy. He couldn’t figure out if he needed to wait for the ball to come to him in a certain spot, or if he needed to be more selfish.
Once he found the right middle ground, everything started clicking.
“Rodney is more of a guy who plays on the wings,” Martin said. “You get him to areas on those wings and he’s gotten to the point where he is good off the dribble and he can score in that mid-range game. Jacob never really had that mid-range game.
“… Rodney, right now, has got that mid-range game going.”
That much was evident on Tuesday against the Bears. McGruder consistently took passes between the lane and the three-point line, took a dribble toward the basket and had plenty of open space to make uncontested shots. He went 10 of 14 from the field, including two three-pointers, and got to the free-throw line eight times.
Baylor defenders, like most in the Big 12, struggled to keep up. They spend most of their time defending the rim and three-point line. Adjusting to an old school, mid-range scorer on the fly proved tricky.
“It can be an advantage,” said McGruder of his scoring style. “It works to the advantage of people who work at it and try to perfect that part of their game so they have a variety of options to go to when they have the basketball. It is something I try to work on and try to perfect.”
He will continue trying to perfect his game and role within K-State’s offense as the season goes along.
If his play against Long Beach State 20 days ago was a turning point for McGruder, Martin hopes the next few weeks can help him improve even more.
“Rodney is wired the right way,” Martin said. “That engine never slows down. That young man, he’s going to be great.”
