Trae Young has Oklahoma primed for a Big 12 revival

Behind Trae Young, can Oklahoma challenge Kansas atop the Big 12?

This may be an article about Oklahoma, but every conversation about the Big 12 rightfully starts with Kansas. Winners of 13 straight regular season conference championships, the Jayhawks are the proverbial elephant in the room for every other program hopeful of winning the league’s title.

But this season, the fictitious birds look vulnerable atop their perch. They’ve lost two of their last three and needed a late Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk 3-pointer against Nebraska on Saturday to avoid a trio of defeats.

Kansas’s problems have been hashed out ad nauseam. The Jayhawks don’t get to the foul line, their offense sputters when the 3s aren’t falling and there’s no depth to be found in the frontcourt.

And yet, picking against them in the Big 12 remains a fool’s errand. Allen Fieldhouse is one of, if not the, preeminent home court advantage in college basketball. A title race doesn’t even usually start until Kansas loses a conference home game. Something that’s happened just six times in Bill Self’s 15 seasons at the helm.

That the Sooners are even within earshot of this conversation — and at 8-1 with back-to-back wins over a pair of preseason top 10 teams, they are — is a testament to growth, from new sources and old.

One year removed from a trip to the Final Four, Oklahoma finished 5-13 in the Big 12 last season. It was the Sooners’ worst performance in the league since 2011-12, Lon Kruger’s first campaign as head coach.

Last season’s team wasn’t as bad as the porous record would suggest, though. In many ways, its struggles were reflective of the strength of the conference as a whole. The 2016-17 Big 12 rates out as the second toughest league of the last 17 seasons based on KenPom’s adjusted efficiency margin. It was also the product of some pretty miserable luck. There was the double overtime loss to Iowa State at home and the one point miss against Texas on the road. Starting point guard and leading scorer Jordan Woodard battled injuries as well, missing 10 of the team’s 18 Big 12 contests.

All of that is to say Oklahoma’s roster entering the 2017-18 season wasn’t bereft of returning talent. Khadeem Lattin was a borderline top 100 recruit coming out of high school. He played a role as a shot blocker, rebounder and rim runner on the Sooners’ Final Four team. This season, he’s doing the same, averaging 16.2 points, 14.8 rebounds and 3.3 blocks per 40 minutes. Christian James, too, was an important piece of the experience puzzle.

The 6-foot-4 guard wasn’t as highly recruited as Lattin, but he’s a career 38.1 percent 3-point shooter who can help space the floor offensively. Matt Freeman, Kameron McGusty, Jamuni McNeace, Rashard Odomes and Jordan Shepherd all also bring specific skills to the table.

However, none of those players are transcendent talents. They’re nice players, quality options that can fill the roles they’re asked to, but they needed some glue to put it all together. Last season, it was supposed to be Woodard. This season, it’s been Trae Young.

If you hadn’t watched the 5-star freshman turned National Player of the Year candidate take the floor yet this season, then the first 20 minutes of Oklahoma’s matchup against Wichita State on Saturday was one hell of an introduction. Young powered the Sooners to 54 points at a 1.32 points per possession clip. He scored 21 of those himself, going 4-of-6 from beyond the arc, and assisting on seven more made buckets while committing zero turnovers.

21 points, seven assists, zero turnovers. That’s the type of stat line you look for out of a point guard over 40 minutes, not 20.

Young finished with 29 points, 10 assists and four turnovers in a 91-83 road win over the nation’s No. 3 ranked team, but he’s been putting up ridiculous numbers all season. Through nine games, the 6-foot-2 guard is averaging 28.8 points and 8.9 assists per game. No other freshman since at least 1992-93 has put up similar numbers.

Young’s scoring itself is a wild outlier. Among freshmen guards who’ve scored more than 20.0 points per game over that same time frame, he has the best true shooting percentage of the bunch. He quite literally stands alone:

The foundation of Young’s efficiency is his 3-point shooting. He’s made 37.5 percent of his 3s this season on nearly 10.0 attempts per game while frequently taking difficult shots created by himself. In fact, more of his 3-point makes have been unassisted than assisted, per Hoop-Math. Young’s ability to shoot from well beyond NBA range and off the dribble makes him a one-of-a-kind guard in college basketball.

It also opens up the offense for everyone else. Oklahoma shredded the Shockers, for example, by putting Young in ball screen actions with fellow freshman Brady Manek. Fearing Young’s shooting, Wichita State’s defenders had to attack him with both defenders, but Young used his vision to find Manek popping out himself. The 6-foot-9 forward delivered by connecting on five of his 13 3-point attempts. In other instances, Young blitzed into the lane, collapsing the defense and opening up shots for everyone else whether inside the arc or outside it.

Next: Projected top 10 after Wichita State's loss

Young’s unparalleled offensive output is exactly what Oklahoma needed to make the leap. The Sooners have jumped from 238th in raw offensive efficiency in 2016-17 to 19th this season. Their defense was already good enough. It ranked 39th nationally a year ago. Not much has changed on that end.

Now, with two non-conference games remaining — including a home tilt against Northwestern, a preseason top 25 team — Oklahoma may be set to enter Big 12 play with the most accomplished resume of anyone in the the league, including Kansas. The Jayhawks’ aforementioned struggles have already precipitated worrisome whispers regarding their upcoming title defense.

Young’s outing against Wichita State is only going to make them louder.