Miles Bridges, the FBI and Grayson Allen headline the 2017-18 college basketball season
The college basketball season is finally here and we thought it would make some sense to kick things off by diving into the biggest stories of 2017-18. From Miles Bridges to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to Grayson Allen, here’s a look at where to start if you’re just getting into the college basketball spirit.
The good: Miles Bridges is back!
Michigan State’s Miles Bridges could be in the NBA right now. The 6-foot-7 forward had every chance to be one-and-done after an impressive freshman campaign with the Spartans, but instead of opting for the hat of a lottery team on draft night, Bridges is about to suit up in the green and the white once again.
It’s not unheard of for a potential lottery pick to decide to return to school rather that jump into a career as a professional. North Carolina’s Harrison Barnes came back for a sophomore season earlier this decade. Marcus Smart did as well. Even Texas A&M’s Robert Williams beat Bridges to the punch this year. There have been others, too.
The sophomore seems to be back for the right reasons, though. There hasn’t been talk of bolstering his draft stock — if you want to understand why that’s a dangerous proposition, just ask California’s Ivan Rabb — he just wants to win basketball games. Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo told ESPN when he asked Bridges why he wanted to return, the 19-year old said he wanted to play in a Final Four and win a national championship.
Well, now Bridges will have his chance.
The Spartans are expected to make a big leap in 2017-18 behind Bridges and a trio of other sophomores. Last season, the group struggled, finishing the regular season with an 18-13 record before getting bounced by Kansas in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Turnovers were a major problem on both ends. Michigan State couldn’t create them on defense and coughed them up all too often on offense. In truth, Bridges’ Final Four hopes probably lie as much with point guards Lourawls “Tum Tum” Nairn and Cassius Winston as they do with his own individual performance.
It’s actually kind of hard to imagine Bridges having a better individual season than he did as a freshman when he averaged 16.9 points, 8.3 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game. Bridges and LSU’s Ben Simmons are the only freshmen (min. 300 minutes played) since at least 2010 to put up those numbers.
Looking forward, Sports Illustrated runs a projection system to estimate the expected output of major conference players and they expect something similar for Bridges this season, estimating he’ll average 17.5 points, 7.0 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game in 2017-18. If he hits those marks, he’ll be just the fifth major conference sophomore (min. 300 minutes played) to achieve them since at least 2010.
Bridges’ return to college basketball will be about more than any individual production or Final Four hopes for non-Michigan State fans. Miles Bridges is fun personified on the basketball court unless your team’s playing against him. He is one of the sport’s elite athletes, a pogo stick coming off the floor whether he’s creeping behind defenses in the halfcourt and sprinting out in transition and his dunks have a way of going viral on Twitter. In case you’d forgotten, he gave us a taste this summer with a putback slam game-winner at the Moneyball Pro-Am:
Michigan State fan or not, be happy that Miles Bridges is back playing college basketball. It’s easy to be concerned about his decision to forgo an NBA payday, but it’s not your life to live. Bridges has his own goals and while they may contradict with the ones you have for your team, it’s unquestionably a good thing for the sport that we’ll get to see him throwing down more dunks like the above this season.
The bad: The FBI investigation figures to loom large
A quick recap in case you’ve missed out on the biggest college basketball story since maybe ever. Back in September, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation got together to arrest assistant basketball coaches from Arizona, Auburn, Oklahoma State and USC along with six other individuals for allegedly scheming to defraud universities.
The DOJ and the FBI allege the presence of two schemes. The first one saw money move from a financial adviser and an agent to assistants coaches in order to persuade college basketball players to sign with those advisers once they enter the NBA. The second one was a more strict pay for play scheme involving the transfer of money from Adidas to the families of top high school recruits.
The dominoes have already started to fall in response to the probe. All four assistant coaches have been fired as has Rick Pitino at Louisville. The Cardinals were one of the schools mentioned as part of the second scheme from above as the complaint alleges that Adidas worked to essentially pay $100,000 for the commitment of 5-star prospect Brian Bowen.
Although it seems unlikely there will be additional arrests, the FBI’s continued investigation figures to remain one of the season’s biggest storylines.
Bowen is still going on campus at Louisville and the FBI has told the school they can start to evaluate his eligibility, but the likelihood that he actually plays this season seems low. Other schools have also started holding players out of games. Auburn’s Austin Wiley and Danjel Purifoy are being held out indefinitely “to avoid any potential eligibility issues,” according to the school. Meanwhile, Alabama announced that star freshman Collin Sexton hasn’t been reinstated by the NCAA yet and USC is holding De’Anthony Melton out of its scrimmages.
That so many fun college basketball players may not see the court this season is a real downer. That it is the product of a messed up system is even more infuriating.
The mysterious: What are we going to get out of Grayson Allen in 2017-18?
Back in 2015, Duke’s Grayson Allen burst into the national consciousness with a 16-point performance in the Blue Devils’ win over Wisconsin in the national title game. Allen, then a freshman, had scored in double figures just four other times that season as he took a backseat to more heralded youngsters, including Tyus Jones, Jahlil Okafor and Justise Winslow.
March, though, is a great month when it comes to birthing college basketball’s biggest stars. On the sport’s most visible stage in its most memorable moments, young adults elevate themselves into the limelight. Allen took advantage.
After forgoing the NBA Draft, his star continued to rise during his sophomore season. As the face of the Blue Devils alongside future No. 2 pick Brandon Ingram, the 6-foot-4 guard averaged 21.6 points per game in what has been his most impressive individual campaign yet.
His national visibility took a darker turn, of course, when he tripped Louisville’s Ray Spalding in February of 2016 and followed it up with a swipe at Florida State’s Xavier Rathan-Mayes. His villain status was cemented when he clipped Elon’s Steven Santa Ana in December 2016 just a few months after telling ESPN he wanted his reputation back ahead of the 2016-17 season.
This isn’t a redemption story about Allen’s feisty feet, however. It’s about which basketball version of Grayson Allen is going to show up for the Blue Devils in 2017-18.
The 21.6 points per game he averaged as a sophomore came on a career-high efficiency as well. Allen finished the season with a 61.6 true shooting percentage as he shot 41.7 percent from behind the arc. National Player of the Year Buddy Hield was the only other player to match those numbers in 2015-16.
Last season, Allen stumbled. He averaged 14.5 points per game on a 56.9 true shooting percentage while converting just 36.5 percent from deep as Luke Kennard outshined him from the season’s start to its finish. A repeat performance won’t get it done if Duke wants to win its second national title in four years.
As a senior, Allen is now the elder statesman on a roster filled with youth. The Blue Devils have the top-ranked recruiting class in the country featuring a quartet of top 25 freshmen, but there’s basically no other experience on the team outside of Allen. Given the hiccups that nearly every freshman experiences, Duke is going to need Allen to be at his best, merging some of the skills he developed last season with the efficiency of his sophomore campaign.
In particular, Allen will need to combine the ball-handling ability he showed as a junior with his shooting numbers from sophomore year. Last season, Allen ranked in the 90th percentile of Division I as a scorer out of the pick-and-roll, per Synergy. That number was largely a product of elite off the dribble shooting, a scheme-changing skill that can alter defenses. Allen averaged 1.179 points per possession (96th percentile) on pull up jump shots last season, per Synergy. He lagged behind as a catch-and-shoot threat, though, converting just 34.6 percent of his chances compared to 44.3 percent as a sophomore.
Next: Arizona's roster is loaded for the Final Four
Allen must wear multiple hats for this Duke team. With a non-shooting point guard in Trevon Duval and two big men on the floor likely at all times, the Blue Devils need Allen to be a floor spacer. When Duval sits and even sometimes when the two share the floor, they’re going to need Allen to create his own shot.
In 2017-18, the pressure is on Allen to live up to fully live up to the potential many thought he had after that national title game performance. If he’s able to, Duke could find itself playing in the season’s final game once again.