The Low-Usage All-Stars: Scoring isn’t everything

3. Mamadi Diakite – Virginia

(18.6 percent usage, +14.7 points/100 possessions BPM)

And then there’s Mamadi Diakite. The big man from Guinea spent his childhood dreaming of becoming a soccer star — until his height got in the way. The 6-foot-9 big man (with a measured wingspan of 7-foot-3), as a redshirt freshman, only became a big part of Virginia’s big man rotation following the dismissal of Memphis transfer Austin Nichols — who, preseason, was expected to be one of the biggest offseason ‘additions’ in college basketball for a title contender.

The additional minutes available have let the ‘Hoos uncover a rotation gem, perhaps earlier than they would have otherwise. Diakite possesses freakish athleticism to go along with his smothering wingspan, regularly swatting shots like this. His teammate, senior London Perrantes, has called him the most athletic player he’s seen in his time at Virginia. His length and movement ability let him cover a ton of ground at the back end of Virginia’s Pack-Line defense.

And it shows up in more than just the eye test. Per hooplens.com, Virginia’s defense goes from NCAA-best to downright terrifying when Diakite is on the floor. Check out the table below:

In the minutes when Diakite is off the floor, Virginia is already holding opponents to an unadjusted 0.81 points per possession — a mark that would be the fifth-best in the country. When he’s on? 0.73 points per possession — a mark that would beat Virginia’s-already-season-best overall mark by 5 points per 100 possessions. His presence is both a deterrent at the rim — teams hit 3.2 percentage points less of their 2’s while he’s on the floor — and a boon at the 3-point line, where teams are shooting 5.3 percentage points worse.

It could just be some noise in 3-point accuracy — Diakite has only been on the floor for 241 possessions so far this year, a small sample for lineup analysis. Intuitively, though, the presence of a rim protector like him allows the perimeter defenders to extend further out: should they be beaten off the dribble while guarding the 3-pointer more closely, Diakite will be there to clean up the back end. It will be something to track as the season progresses.

Diakite is a work in progress at this point on the offensive end — he himself has embraced his current role, saying he prefers swatting shots & blowing up screens to scoring points. But there are seeds of a very dangerous offensive player in there. Most of what he does at this point is finish alley-oops and pick-and-roll feeds — 16 of his 23 made baskets at the rim this year have come off assists. But he’s making 79.3 percent of his baskets in there, and has shown soft hands and commendable restraint — he’s only committed 3 turnovers so far this year, for a minuscule 6.4 turnover percentage.

Diakite’s also shown flashes of range that hint at an offensive player that can go well beyond a pure rim-runner. He’s taken 13 mid-range twos so far this year, hitting 5 of them, and even attempted 3’s, putting in 3 of the 7 he’s tried in 2016-2017. The samples are tiny and close to meaningless from a predictive standpoint — but they do indicate he’s more comfortable with his stroke than your typical big man. Any sort of legitimate spacing value he can add on offense would be big for both Virginia and Diakite’s professional aspirations as his career moves forward.