Ten things to know in AAC basketball: Pierre-Louis is Temple’s one-man wrecking crew
Here are 10 things that has caught the attention of the Wichita Eagle’s Taylor Eldridge from around the American Athletic Conference through the first three weeks of the men’s basketball season.
1. Nate Pierre-Louis is Temple’s one-man wrecking crew
There is no one I love watching in the AAC more than Temple junior Nate Pierre-Louis. I thought he was the best on-ball defender in the American last season and it appears as if he’s taken his defense to another level for his junior year.
Pierre-Louis is the type of defender that makes the opposition alter their game plan. If you don’t have a dependable guard who can protect his dribble, getting the ball past half-court is not something you can take for granted against Pierre-Louis. Just watch these highlights from him terrorizing ball handlers so far this season:
What makes Pierre-Louis such a nightmare is that he is an elite athlete in a 6-4 frame with probably the quickest hands in the conference. Defenders with high steal rates usually feast on ball-hawking plays where they can swoop in the passing lanes and pick off passes. Pierre-Louis has his fair share of those, but what makes him special is that the majority of his steals are just straight up taking the ball away from the ball handler.
Pierre-Louis already has tallied 13 steals through three games for Temple and his steal rate of 7.6% ranks No. 5 in the nation.
I love what first-year coach Aaron McKie is doing with Pierre-Louis on offense, as he has gone from a bit player standing in the corner to running the team’s offense. He uses that athleticism to take defenders off the dribble, then is surprisingly advanced in reading the defense and identifying the open kick-out to a shooter.
Pierre-Louis has an impressive 3.3 assist-to-turnover rate and his assist rate of 32.7% is a huge jump up from his previous career-high of 13.8%. So far those stats have been compiled against three overmatched teams. It will be interesting to see how Pierre-Louis the creator does when Temple has its first stiff challenge this Friday at USC.
2. Houston has found a go-to scorer in freshman Caleb Mills
On a team with a former five-star McDonald’s All-American in Quentin Grimes, a unanimous preseason first-team all-conference player in DeJon Jarreau and a rising star in sophomore Nate Hinton, it was redshirt freshman Caleb Mills that Kelvin Sampson gave the ball when Houston needed a basket in crunch time against BYU.
That shouldn’t be a surprise to those paying attention to that program. Here’s what Sampson had to say about Mills last year:
“I don’t like making bold statements, but I can safely say Caleb is the best offensive player I’ve recruited since I’ve been here,” Sampson told the Houston media.
BYU stunned Houston on a last-second jumper for the game-winner, but Mills showed signs of being a headache for opposing AAC teams for the next four years. He finished with a team-high 17 points off the bench on 7 of 13 shooting.
Sampson has said Mills can score in a variety of ways and at all three levels, but against BYU Mills was at his best when he was going toward the basket, whether that was catching a pass in transition and attacking a back-pedaling defense or getting an isolation play started at the top of the key.
Mills isn’t big — he’s listed at 6-foot-3 and 175 pounds — but he showed a knack for driving into his defender, using his body to create separation and rising up for a jumper at the spot of his choosing.
That’s a valuable skill to have, especially late in close games when open shots are at a premium. It’s not a pathway to ideal efficiency that 45% of Mills’ shots right now are 2-point jumpers, but it’s also only been two games.
If Mills starts knocking down threes, then watch out. Houston is loaded with potent scorers, but Mills might end up being the best of them all. Keep an eye on Mills, as Houston travels to Eugene for a showdown at Oregon on Friday night.
3. Can Brandon Rachal be the explosive scorer Tulsa desperately needs?
Most of the reason why I was so down on Tulsa entering this season was because I didn’t think it had a big-time scorer.
It’s too early to say for sure, but Tulsa might have found a gem in junior Brandon Rachal, who started his career at LSU then played last season at a junior college. Rachal has been Tulsa’s best player through a 3-1 start, averaging 17.0 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.3 steals on top of posting a 120.0 offensive rating on heavy usage.
Rachal is having success in a lot of the same ways he did as a freshman at LSU. He’s only 6-5, but at 215 pounds, Rachal’s bread and butter has been utilizing his frame to bully smaller defenders and using his speed to drive around bigger defenders to finish around the basket.
So far no one has been able to stop Rachal from getting to the rim and finishing, as Hoop-Math.com shows nearly half (44%) of his offense is generated on shots at the rim and he is finishing at an extremely high clip of 78.9%. When teams have gone zone, Rachal floats along the baseline and Tulsa has done well to unlock the zone by dumping it down to him and letting him sky through the air and finish at the rim.
What is different in Rachal’s game from his time at LSU, where he only attempted five three-pointers in 27 games two years ago, is his shot from distance. It’s not his first choice, but Rachal is starting to let it fly more from the outside and he’s knocked down 3 of 8 triples through four games this season at Tulsa.
If Rachal is able to hit threes at just a respectable rate, that’s only going to make him a tougher guard for opponents.
It also appears Tulsa is relying heavily on him early in the season. Rachal is averaging 22 points in Tulsa’s three wins, all by single-digits over KenPom teams ranging from No. 172 to No. 289, while the one game where Rachal struggled through foul trouble and finished with two points was the 14-point loss at UT Arlington.
Tulsa has cream puffs the next two games, but we will see how Rachal fares in his first matchup against high-major athletes when Tulsa travels to Vanderbilt at the end of the month. If Rachal proves to be the real deal, Tulsa should escape the bottom-three finish in the AAC that I had them pegged for.
4. The reigning AAC Player of the Year has been benched
Benching the reigning AAC Player of the Year in the third game of the season is certainly a way to drive home a point for a first-year coach trying to establish a new culture in a program.
That’s the gamble John Brannen just took at Cincinnati, deciding not to play star senior Jarron Cumberland in the Bearcats’ 85-53 victory over Alabama A&M last Thursday.
“It was a coach’s decision,” Brannen told reporters afterward. “I made a decision prior to the game that he wouldn’t be playing tonight. That’s pretty much all I have on that.”
Brannen refused to say what led to the decision and also if Cumberland would play in the Paradise Jam, which starts Friday against Illinois State in the Virgin Islands.
“That’s the great part about a coach’s decision,” Brannen said. “I’ll have a chance to re-evaluate it going forward.”
Cumberland, a 6-foot-5 wing, missed most of summer workouts and fall practices due to a foot injury. He averaged 12.0 points in 25.5 minutes in Cincinnati’s first two games. One of the biggest questions facing Cincinnati this season was how Cumberland would adjust to a new system run by Brannen. It appears the relationship is off to a rocky start.
He won the AAC Player of the Year last season when Mick Cronin funneled Cincinnati’s offense through Cumberland, who averaged 14.6 shots per game and had a usage rate north of 31% for the highest mark in the American.
It was a small sample size, but in two games in Brannen’s new system, Cumberland averaged 9.5 shots per game with his usage rate dipping to 23.5%.
Brannen’s decision to force Cumberland to miss a game could be the attention-grabbing move that needed to be made to establish the culture. Maybe Cumberland comes back even more motivated now. Or maybe the move created even more tension between the first-year coach and the team’s star player.
It’s certainly a situation to monitor this week to see if Cumberland travels with the team and plays in the Paradise Jam. When Cincinnati has Cumberland, the Bearcats have a star capable of pushing them toward a top-25 season and AAC championship. Without him, Cincinnati is still a talented team but one whose ceiling is certainly lowered.
5. DJ Jeffries carving out super sub role for Memphis
Even without No. 1 recruit James Wiseman, Memphis has an embarrassment of talent assembled on the roster this season.
The perfect example of that is the Tigers are able to bring a player the caliber of D.J. Jeffries, a four-star and top-50 recruit, off the bench. It looks like Penny Hardaway is opting to start Lance Thomas at the vacated center spot until/if Wiseman returns, so that means Jeffries will continue building his case for AAC Sixth Man of the Year.
Jeffries, a 6-foot-7, 225-pound versatile forward, is showing he can do a little bit of everything so far this season. He’s averaging 11.5 points, 4.0 rebounds, 2.0 assists, 1.8 steals, 1.3 blocks and 0.5 turnovers. He’s shooting 62.5% inside the arc and has drilled 3 of 7 three-pointers through four games.
It’s not often teams have the luxury to bring someone who can do everything on the basketball court well off the bench. But that’s what Memphis has in Jeffries, who is posting extremely good block and steal rates on top of posting a team-best 139.6 offensive rating.
It appears as if Memphis has found the perfect role for Jeffries, but if he continues to produce like this then Hardaway may be forced to find more minutes for him. The Tigers will need him this Saturday for a big rivalry game with Ole Miss at home.
6. South Florida has a major (turnover) problem
It wasn’t too long ago when South Florida was the trendy dark-horse pick to make the NCAA Tournament from the American.
Then news came out just before the season that Alexis Yetna, USF’s double-double machine and rising star, suffered a season-ending knee injury. Now the Bulls are coming off back-to-back home losses, including an embarrassing 17-point drubbing by a IUPUI team ranked No. 243 in KenPom.
How did USF drop so far so fast? Look no further than its turnover problem.
In its two home losses last week, South Florida combined for more turnovers (43) than field goals (42). The Bulls have wasted more than a quarter of their possessions on turnovers, a 25.8% turnover rate that ranks No. 332 in the country.
“We’re struggling to kind of get an identity of how we need to play and that’s something obviously that we need to really, really address during this off-week now,” USF coach Brian Gregory told the Tampa Bay Times after the loss. “We kind of planned on how we were gonna play for six months. We’re not gonna be able to play that way. Some guys need to step up, there’s no question about that.”
Losing Yetna right before the season is a tough blow, but that doesn’t excuse most of the turnovers South Florida is committing early this season. Name a way for a player to turn the ball over and there’s a good chances USF has committed that type of turnover.
In the IUPUI loss alone, USF had several traveling violations, players catching passes standing out of bounds, turnovers due to inaccurate passes that should have been easy completions and even one where a player wasn’t paying attention and a pass smacked him so hard in the chest in the middle of the court that it caromed out of bounds.
Some of USF’s turnovers can be chalked up to the transition to Division I basketball for the new players in the rotation. What is far more troubling is the decision-making of star senior point guard Laquincy Rideau, who is averaging 1.7 assists and 6.0 turnovers through three games.
Rideau has always taken a lot of chances and can best be described as a high-risk, high-reward type of point guard. But this season there have been hardly any rewards and an alarming amount of risk. Rideau’s turnover rate has ballooned to 34.8%, an obscenely high amount for how much he handles the ball.
If Rideau and South Florida don’t get their turnover problems under control, there’s a very real possibility they will lose their third straight home game this Thursday when a good Wofford team comes to Tampa.
7. Brandon Mahan helps UCF steal road win at Illinois State
Brandon Mahan looked out of the rotation after not playing well in just eight minutes in UCF’s 79-70 loss against Miami last week.
But five days later, the 6-foot-5 Texas A&M transfer redeemed himself with a difference-making performance against Illinois State to help UCF steal a 67-65 victory on the road. Mahan scored what proved to be the game-winning basket with 25 seconds left on an offensive rebound put-back and finished with 17 points and 10 rebounds to lead the Knights.
That kind of impact shouldn’t be a surprise considering Mahan started 20 games last season for Texas A&M and knocked down 43 three-pointers on 38% accuracy. The Illinois State game was the first time Mahan got to fire away like he normally does, as he finished 3 of 9 from beyond the arc.
What was surprising was how much of an impact Mahan made on the glass. He wasn’t much of a rebounder on either end at Texas A&M, but that skill may be unlocked in Johnny Dawkins’ system. Mahan was consistently crashing the glass and that led him to being in the right place at the right time for many of his career-high 10 rebounds.
Mahan has already tracked down seven offensive rebounds in three games, a 14.8% offensive rebound rate that ranks him No. 77 in the country.
Did Mahan’s heroics on Sunday earn him a starting nod? We’ll find out on Saturday when UCF takes on Charleston at home. Regardless of where he goes from here, Mahan helped UCF pick up a valuable road win in November.
8. Tulane is off to 3-0 start behind Georgia transfer
First-year coach Ron Hunter said he will walk on water before Tulane finishes last in the American this season. So far, so good with the Green Wave off to a 3-0 start this season.
Granted, Tulane has the weakest strength of schedule in the country, per Ken Pom, to this point, but the play of Georgia transfer Teshaun Hightower cannot be overlooked. The 6-foot-5 junior guard is averaging a team-best 19.3 points on 50% shooting to go along with 5.3 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 1.3 steals per game.
Tulane’s offense is running through Hightower and so far (very bad) defenses haven’t been able to slow him down on driving to the basket.
Per Hoop-Math.com, Hightower is generating 44% of his shots at the rim and he is finishing an absurd 71.4% on those shots. Synergy shows Hightower is making 73.3% of shots within five feet of the rim. When Tulane is putting him in ball screen action, Hightower is taking it to the basket nearly every time.
What makes Hightower even more efficient is that when he’s not finishing at the rim, he’s drawing fouls. According to Ken Pom, Hightower is drawing 8.3 fouls per game, a top-20 rate in the country, which has led to a foul rate of 84.4%, a top-50 rate in the country. Hightower has already shot 27 free throws in three games and is cashing in on them at a 81.5% clip.
How Hightower fairs in Tulane’s first challenge of the season will be worth paying attention to this week, as the Green Wave head to the Myrtle Beach Invitational and open with Mississippi State. Tulane is the lowest-ranked KenPom team in the field, so coming away with just one win this week would be a feat for the team.
9. Josh Carlton being featured heavily in UConn’s uneven start
It’s hard to know what to make of the UConn Huskies through three games this season. UConn looked to have entered full on melt-down mode in early Novemeber when it gave up 96 points in a home loss to Saint Joseph’s. But then the Huskies turned around four days later and knocked off No. 15 Florida in a 62-59 victory.
One thing that caught my eye is how much UConn is using center Josh Carlton this season. He’s been a promising player the last two years, but nothing indicated he was ready to become the focal point of the offense on a team loaded with bucket-getters like Alterique Gilbert and Christian Vital.
But Carlton’s usage rate is through a roof at 37.6%, by far the team-high and nearly double from what his usage rate was last season. It could be a result of a small sample size and padded because Carlton is an elite offensive rebounder, which gives him extra shots on tip-ins and put-backs.
But UConn also seems to be making more of a concerted effort to look for Carlton in the post and on the roll. Carlton hasn’t been great efficiency-wise, as he’s struggled to score consistently in the post and is making just 51.6% of his shots close to the basket, per Synergy.
How far the 6-11 big man progresses in his junior season could have a lot to do with how well UConn does in its final season in the American.
10. Second chances key to SMU’s 4-0 start
SMU is 4-0 after claiming a 59-57 victory at Evansville, which became an impressive win after the Purple Aces took down No. 1-ranked Kentucky earlier last week.
How are the Mustangs doing it? A good part of SMU’s 4-0 start is due to its tremendous job on the offensive glass, as the Mustangs rank 15th in the country by collecting 39.1% of their own misses.
Look no further than SMU’s last possession in the win at Evansville. The Mustangs got the ball back with 60 seconds remaining and a 56-54 lead. After Tyson Jolly missed a jumper at the end of the shot clock, Ethan Chargois came down with the offensive rebound to allow SMU to run off 20 more seconds. After Jolly missed another time, Feron Hunt came sprinting in for a missed tip-in, then SMU grabbed its third offensive rebound of the possession when Isiaha Mike came down with it and was fouled with eight seconds remaining. Thanks to those offensive rebounds, SMU was able to waste 52 seconds and extend its lead to four points to all but secure the win.
Hunt in particular has been difficult to keep off the glass, as the sophomore is taking advantage of an expanded role this season and is posting a top-100 offensive rebound rate of 14.7%. Chargois, Mike and Jolly are also posting above-average offensive rebound rates for SMU, which has another road test coming this Saturday at UNLV.
This story was originally published November 19, 2019 at 7:04 AM.
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