5 NBA Draft sleepers in the NCAA Tournament

4. D’Marcus Simonds, PG, Georgia State

D’Marcus Simonds, after first garnering some recognition for his 2017-18 season in which he won Sun Belt player of the year, beat 2018 Oklahoma City Thunder draft pick Kevin Hervey in the conference championship game. His true shooting is down from an already questionable 53.0 to an outright bad 50.5, in part because as a career 29.6 percent shooter from distance, he went from taking 24 percent of his shots from 3 point range to taking 39 percent. He had one game in the course of this entire season where he missed fewer than 5 shots. And that’s only with reference to his scoring efficiency. He’s also had a slight uptick in turnovers despite not improving his assist totals, including ten separate games with five or more.  In other words, this year has been a disaster for his draft stock.

But let’s say his matchup with Houston plays out like Houston’s matchups with Jarron Cumberland, of Cincinnati, did. Cumberland, an extremely strong, borderline NBA-caliber driver with an inconsistent (albeit more successful) jumper and turnover issues, is probably the closest analog to Simonds that Houston has played. Cumberland also scored 80 points across 3 games against Houston, including 33 in a conference tournament final victory. If Simonds does something like that in an upset, he could easily find himself in draft discussions again.