Robert Williams is back, but point guard play will decide Texas A&M’s season
Robert Williams playing small forward never felt quite right.
Williams, the 6-foot-9 athletic phenom who projected as a lottery pick in the 2017 NBA Draft because of his 7-foot-4 wingspan and potential to play center in a league that continues to downsize, regularly found himself playing out of position for the Texas A&M Aggies at the end of last season.
A calamity of errors forced head coach Billy Kennedy to play Williams alongside fellow big men Tonny Trocha-Morelos and Tyler Davis as the Aggies stumbled to an uninspiring 16-15 record just one year removed from the Sweet Sixteen.
There was no specific catalyst, but a season-ending foot injury to D.J. Hogg in February took away Kennedy’s other options. More than 60 percent of the possessions the team played with a frontline of Williams, Trocha-Morelos and Davis came in the nine games that Hogg missed, per Hoop Lens.
The roots of these constraints, though, date all the way back to September 2016 when the NCAA ruled incoming freshman J.J. Caldwell ineligible for the 2016-17 season. Losing the 4-star recruit hamstrung Kennedy by taking away the Aggies’ best true point guard option and thrusting shooting guard Admon Gilder into the role, moving several other players up a position along with him.
Caldwell was one of the top passers in the 2017 recruiting class and his ability to create for others would have been significant. With hindsight, it’s easy to see how damaging the NCAA’s decision was.
The Aggies turned it over on 21.2 percent of their possessions, the 320th worst mark nationally, for example. Texas A&M also became heavily reliant on its big men to score. 17.9 percent of its possessions ended in a post up, the fourth highest mark in Division I, per Synergy. Another 9.2 percent of them finished with a putback via an offensive rebound.
Meanwhile, the Aggies had nobody on the perimeter who could reliably generate their own offense. The team finished with its lowest percentages of possessions used by pick-and-roll ball-handlers (7.5) and in isolation (2.6) of the Kennedy era:
Even worse, they ranked 344th out of 351 Division I teams in points per possession scored by pick-and-roll ball-handlers and in the 22nd percentile when it came to efficiency in isolation, per Synergy. In a sport often dominated by guard play, those are disheartening numbers.
Texas A&M’s adjusted offensive efficiency ranked 95th in the nation, per KenPom, the worst mark for the team during a recent three season run of relevance. For context, the Aggies’ offense was almost as good as the Toledo Rockets or Fort Wayne Mastodons.
It may not be a stretch, then, to suggest that the addition of Caldwell and Marquette transfer Duane Wilson as point guard options will be more significant for the Aggies in 2017-18 than Williams’ surprising decision to return for his sophomore season.
On a macro level, the likely reduction in turnover rate and having a player who can create his own shot will be valuable, but on the micro level, perhaps no player stands to benefit more than the man Williams ultimately replaced in the starting lineup.
D.J. Hogg, a former top 30 recruit, was one of four top 100 players to commit to Texas A&M as part of a landmark 2015 recruiting class for Kennedy. Hogg was a high school and AAU teammate of Davis who chose the Aggies over Baylor and UCLA. However, he hasn’t yet hit his stride in the college game. Coming out of the prep ranks, Hogg was well-regarded as an outside shooter — good enough that one media member suggested he had “the type of deep range and accuracy that would make J.J. Redick envious.” At Texas A&M, though, he’s made just 34.7 percent of his 259 3-point attempts. Not quite Redick levels.
With a point guard capable of setting him up, Hogg could be poised for a more efficient season. Although he improved as a shooter during his sophomore campaign, the 6-foot-9 forward was tasked with more offensive creation than he’s proven himself capable of. Hogg nearly doubled his percentage of possessions used as the pick-and-roll ball-handler in 2016-17 despite ranking in the 11th percentile as a scorer on those plays and turning it over on 25.0 percent of his 52 possessions, per Synergy.
Meanwhile, just 20.9 percent of Hogg’s possessions ended in a spot up last season compared to 38.8 percent in 2015-16 when he had Alex Caruso and Anthony Collins creating looks for him. If the Aggies are able to harness Hogg’s improved shooting and combine it with improved looks, he could finally have the type of season that many expected him to when he came out of high school.
Next: 5 potential preseason No. 1 teams in college basketball
On paper, Texas A&M has the pieces befitting a preseason top 25 ranking, but questions remain regarding how the puzzle will come together. Davis, Trocha-Morelos and Williams should form one of the best frontcourts in the nation in whatever combination Kennedy chooses to play them in — yes, even all at once — while Hogg has the potential to be one of the most versatile forwards in Division I.
The key to unlocking it all will lie in the backcourt where Caldwell, the talented freshman, and Wilson, the experienced journeyman, will provide the Aggies with the much needed point guard play that they lacked last season.