Welcome to a late January tradition, my rankings of the top 25 players in college hoops. Even a team that gets all the way to the national title game in April has played half its games by now. So, yes, it's high time we came to some consensus on the best players in this here sport.
Just a reminder that NBA-agnostic player evaluation is the name of this game. We'll leave the mock drafts and fretting about the future to highly qualified others. This is how players are ranked on present-tense college impact only.
Enjoy ...
1. Zion Williamson, Duke Blue Devils
Williamson obliterates long-standing and rather cherished fault lines between casual fans and the most dedicated students of the game. Both groups are equally transfixed, and more specifically, the Duke freshman gives the latter community zero opportunity to say, "Well, actually ..." Williamson really is as good as his dunks, and that is saying quite a lot.
Mike Krzyzewski's freshman is doing something we've never seen before. Put simply, there's a reason Williamson is shooting 75 percent on his 2s. Fully 86 percent of his 2-point attempts are recorded at the rim. Williamson gets all the way to the basket with a frequency unmatched in recent years among volume 2-point scorers.
Granted, there are featured scorers who make more 2s per game than Williamson (e.g., Ethan Happ), and certainly there are supporting players devoting an exceedingly high proportion of their shot attempts to dunks (for instance, Tacko Fall or Udoka Azubuike last season). But in the past decade, we haven't seen someone at Williamson's level of scoring get to the rim for such a large share of his attempts.
Naturally, some of these attempts at the rim are putbacks, and some are finishing touches on alley-oops. Then again, offensive boards and lobs to the rim weren't discovered just this season. It nevertheless fell to Williamson to be the first major conference player this decade to score north of 20 points per outing while carrying out very nearly his entire interior game at point-blank range.
The Blue Devils' star does other things, of course. In his past 110 defensive possessions, he has blocked seven shots and recorded three steals. Plus, Williamson hits the occasional 3.
In highlights, in numbers, in potential future earnings and in present-tense bottom-line impact, Zion stands alone.
2. Ja Morant, Murray State Racers
No player in recent memory has come as far as fast as Morant, in both the popular imagination and, yes, projected NBA potential. The 6-foot-3 sophomore is now being slotted in among this and that Duke freshman as one of the first five players taken in this summer's draft. That's not bad for a point guard who was passed over last season for Ohio Valley Conference Freshman of the Year honors. For decades to come, Austin Peay's Terry Taylor will be telling skeptical listeners that he really did beat Ja Morant.
We're speaking of a player who is capable of scoring 40 points, dishing 11 assists, recording five steals and going 21-of-21 within 40 minutes of basketball. Morant leads the nation in assist rate, draws seven fouls per 40 minutes and delivers spectacular dunks. With its point guard delivering a fusillade of assists on time and on target, Murray State has distinguished itself as one of the best 2-point shooting teams in Division I.
Will we get to see Morant in the NCAA tournament? (We already have, of course. The Racers lost to West Virginia in the 2018 round of 64. The freshman scored 14 points.) There'll likely be no way of knowing until the OVC tournament gets underway at the Ford Center in Evansville, Indiana, in March. Belmont will have something to say about MSU reaching its second consecutive field of 68, but Morant taking on some favored but terrified major conference opponent would make for a must-see game.
3. Ethan Happ, Wisconsin Badgers
The book on Happ is that he makes 2s and records assists, but if the senior were really doing just two things, he couldn't have notched that triple-double against Northwestern last weekend. He is, in fact, the engine of an ascendant Wisconsin team on both sides of the ball.
Greg Gard is blessed with one of the best defenses in the nation, and the things the Badgers are good at on D are things that bear Happ's unmistakable fingerprints. Big Ten opponents have connected on just 41 percent of their 2s, and the 6-foot-10 senior has long been able to do his defensive work early on a possession and alter shots in the paint without posting gaudy numbers for blocks. Happ is also an outstanding individual defensive rebounder on a team that would be in potentially dire straits on the glass without him.
So about that 47 percent foul shooting. It's a close-game liability, to be sure. Then again, hacking Happ away from the ball in the final minute didn't work well for Michigan, and anyway, there's an entire Happ portfolio to be considered. The point guard-like passing, the deft ballhandling, the pressure put on opposing defenses by a 6-foot-10 guy who can bring the ball up the floor in transition and, yes, the tops-in-a-major-conference 8.3 made 2-pointers per game ... Happ is the best senior in basketball.
4. Grant Williams, Tennessee Volunteers
Williams nearly set an NCAA record last week at Vanderbilt, going 23-of-23 at the line in Tennessee's 88-83 overtime win. That turned out to be one make short of a record set in 1959, but Rick Barnes' star is posting his own indelible marks for the nation's top-ranked team.
With the Volunteers boasting possibly the best offense the SEC has seen since Kentucky won a national title in 2012, one might assume that the junior has had a little something to do with that. Indeed, Williams is the heart and soul of a Tennessee attack that's ripping through the conference at the rate of 1.23 points per possession. No player in the country draws fouls as often as the Vols' star (again: 23-of-23), and he makes opponents pay by hitting 83 percent of his tries at the line.
Part of Tennessee's secret sauce is the SEC's lowest turnover rate, and Williams gets full credit there. He draws all those fouls and makes all those 2s while giving the ball away just once every 26 offensive possessions. The Vols and their star are putting up the kinds of numbers that can end with a national championship.
5. Markus Howard, Marquette Golden Eagles
We are living in a 3-point revolution, and no player in 2019 storms those particular barricades with the same effectiveness as Howard. At times this season, the junior has flirted with statistical combinations of volume and accuracy from beyond the arc that bear comparison to the 2015-16 season that netted Oklahoma's Buddy Hield a victory in that year's Wooden Award race. Which is to say Howard is hitting 3.5 3-pointers per outing and draining 43 percent of his shots from distance.
Howard has already scored 40 or more points three times this season, and somewhere, Pete Maravich is definitely smiling (while perhaps asking for a retroactive 3-point line of his own). The 5-foot-11 scorer authored his masterpiece in the form of a 53-point explosion in an overtime win at Creighton. In those 45 minutes in Omaha, Howard made more 3s (10) than an average team does this season in a major conference game (eight). He's a 3-point host unto himself.
6. Cassius Winston, Michigan State Spartans
When Winston was hitting shots from both sides of the arc and spraying assists all over the place last season, the resulting impression was that here was a really promising sophomore who was flourishing alongside the likes of Jaren Jackson and Miles Bridges. Now that the junior is doing the exact same things with a significantly larger role in the offense and without not only those guys but also the injured Josh Langford, the resulting impression is that Winston is one of the best players in the country. He's a more seasoned, more Big Ten-inflected Ja Morant, if you will.
Even after MSU's loss at Purdue, this remains one of the most effective offenses we've seen in recent seasons -- when the Spartans hang on to the ball. Winston's presence gives Tom Izzo a measurable boost on this front, as the featured guard records three assists for every giveaway. Winston is prolific, trustworthy and essential.
7. Jarrett Culver, Texas Tech Red Raiders
Chris Beard has built one of the finest defenses in the nation, and on that side of the ball, the Red Raiders operate as a cohesive whole. When it comes to offense, however, Culver is the man. (Although more shots for Davide Moretti might redress this imbalance a bit -- show him the love, Coach Beard!) Per KenPom, the 6-foot-6 wing carries a heavier workload on that side of the ball than any other featured scorer in Big 12 play.
Usage is supposed to be the enemy of efficiency, but someone forgot to tell Culver. Converting close to 60 percent of your 2s and recording your team's highest assist rate despite being the unremitting focus of every opposing defense is the kind of thing that will get you listed as a likely 2019 lottery pick.
8. Brandon Clarke, Gonzaga Bulldogs
If you predicted before the season that a San Jose State transfer might lead his team to a national title, take one proud step forward. Clarke was excellent when he was with the Spartans, no doubt, but even Mark Few must be delighted with the blithe dominance the 6-foot-8 junior has displayed since arriving in Spokane.
Clarke is getting to the rim like a certain rather celebrated Duke player while serving as the best shot-blocker the Bulldogs have had since Zach Collins -- which wasn't all that long ago, granted. Let's call Clarke the Zags' best starting rim defender since Robert Sacre. The list of players nationally who've had a bigger impact than Clarke on both sides of the ball is very, very short.
9. Dedric Lawson, Kansas Jayhawks
The thing about top-25 lists is that they happen when they happen. Lawson is coming off one of his worst games as a Jayhawk, a strangely listless 4-of-15 showing from the floor in KU's 73-63 road loss at Texas on Tuesday. If nothing else, we've learned that when Lawson sneezes even for one game on offense, KU most definitely catches a cold.
For the most part, however, the 6-foot-9 junior has been superb. When your team's named No. 1 in the preseason and everyone's saying the offense will revolve around this cool new transfer from Memphis, that is high praise, indeed. Other things, including injuries and eligibilities, have gone somewhat awry for Bill Self's group, but Lawson has lived up to his part of the deal.
10. Caleb Martin, Nevada Wolf Pack
This week, in what was supposed to be a tougher-than-usual road test for Eric Musselman's team, Martin scored 26 points on just 12 shots as the Wolf Pack put an 87-70 beating on UNLV in Las Vegas. Put that game on your 2019 shelf and label it vintage Musselman. Nevada is an elite defensive team that consistently overwhelms opponents and then primarily, though not necessarily exclusively, needs Martin to do what he does on offense. So far, that has been a winning arrangement 20 out of 21 times.
11. Tre Jones, Duke Blue Devils
To be honest, Jones was going to be even higher on this list until Duke went and proved it could beat Virginia with no help from the then-injured freshman. Just kidding. Jones is a player type Coach K hasn't had since ... good question. It has been awhile since we've seen a tenacious and dug-in elite defensive point guard in Durham. In addition to giving the Blue Devils a defensive stopper at the point of the opposing offense's attack, Jones is, of course, the central switching station for delivering the ball to this or that 2019 lottery pick.
12. Carsen Edwards, Purdue Boilermakers
In a year when Markus Howard is happening, it's difficult for other players to gain traction on the basis of being really good at perimeter scoring. That said, Edwards is outstanding at perimeter scoring, and he's doing it for a team that (still!) isn't being sufficiently recognized as a regular Villanova of the Midwest. Purdue loves to fire away from deep, and the primary option in that attack is Edwards. Matt Painter's junior hits almost four treys per game, draws opposing defenses and frees up space for the even more accurate efforts of teammate Ryan Cline.
13. De'Andre Hunter, Virginia Cavaliers
Hunter is already celebrated for his versatility on both offense and defense as part of a national title contender, and his ticket has been duly punched as a potential lottery pick. Yet even within this particular rarefied tent, it feels like the sophomore might be building to something more singular (notwithstanding, of course, his potentially catastrophic but ultimately harmless foul this week on an opposing 3-point shooter when Virginia was up by three points in the final seconds of overtime). Hunter's 21 points on just 12 shots in the Cavaliers' 22-point win over Virginia Tech, for example, gave the sense of presaging still more to come.
14. Jarron Cumberland, Cincinnati Bearcats
Last season, Cumberland was one option among many in a Bearcats offense that featured the likes of Jacob Evans, Kyle Washington and Gary Clark. In 2018-19, however, those guys are all long gone, and Mick Cronin's junior is suddenly carrying the heaviest possession-usage figure of any UC player in the KenPom era. (That statement includes Sean Kilpatrick, by the way, who was certainly no wilting flower in terms of commanding the ball.) As a 6-foot-5 combo guard, Cumberland is drawing fouls, hitting 3s and serving as a highly capable distributor of the ball alongside Cane Broome.
15. Mike Daum, South Dakota State Jackrabbits
Here's a reckless bit of speculation. It's likely that Daum has been on more of my top-25 player lists than any other figure so honored here today. Look at the known givens: Daum's a senior, he was the big-deal featured scorer in Brookings from day one, and he was preternaturally effective right from the get-go. Now T.J. Otzelberger's star has scored more points in his college career than the likes of Glen Rice, Christian Laettner, Steph Curry and Jimmer Fredette. Well, Daum's still at it, and if he keeps hitting shots and creating opportunities for teammates such as David Jenkins, the Jackrabbits might reach their fourth consecutive NCAA tournament.
16. Shamorie Ponds, St. John's Red Storm
Ponds is a throwback hero-ball guard, the kind the old, many-teams edition of the Big East used to mint in abundance. When Chris Mullin's team unexpectedly found itself in a nail-biter against California at the Barclays Center in November, Ponds didn't simply take every shot. He maintained exclusive possession of the ball. There weren't any passes, and St. John's escaped. This season, the 6-foot-1 point guard has been getting all the way to the rim with his drives and connecting on 56 percent of his 2s as a result.
17. Rui Hachimura, Gonzaga Bulldogs
It's a mark of the monster Few has built in Spokane, surely, that Hachimura is hitting 61 percent on his 2s and 43 percent on his once-in-a-blue-moon 3s, yet he ranks as merely the Bulldogs' second-most accurate starter from the field. (Take another bow, Mr. Clarke.) When Killian Tillie returned from the injured list in early January, curious observers wondered how the rotation might work with three top-25-caliber players all 6-foot-8 or taller. The short answer to that question is it works just fine. Hachimura and Clarke have continued to start, Tillie comes off the bench, and, once in a while, the three are on the floor together. Gonzaga has options.
18. Ty Jerome, Virginia Cavaliers
Granting that Virginia's offense is an exceedingly egalitarian environment bereft of traditional hero ball, Jerome is pretty important as a scoring point guard. His assist rate thus far is higher than any recorded by predecessor London Perrantes, and Jerome's four turnovers against NC State this week marked just the second time all season that he gave the ball away that many times. He and Kyle Guy will surely someday collaborate to write the basketball world's definitive treatise on coming off pin-down screens and hitting the fleetingly open shot.
19. Zavier Simpson, Michigan Wolverines
Simpson is the most Michigan player on the Michigan roster, and when a team is 20-1 a year after a run to the national title game, that's quite a compliment. He's going to make your 40 minutes miserable if you happen to be an opposing player with the effrontery to try to run an offense. The junior has been named to the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year midseason watch list, but let's do that honor one better. Simpson is one of the best 25 players in the nation -- period. Ask Ohio State: 12 assists and 10 rebounds to go with 11 points gave the sky-hooking, 6-foot point guard just the sixth triple-double in UM history.
20. RJ Barrett, Duke Blue Devils
No single player -- not Ethan Happ, Bruno Fernando, Nickeil Alexander-Walker or even Zion Williamson -- has bent Virginia to his will this season quite the way Barrett did on Jan. 19 at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Possibly it's already necessary to issue a reminder, but the freshman rang up 30 points and connected on 10 of his 13 2-point attempts against what statistically is one of the better defenses we've seen this decade. Add the fact that Barrett was a full participant in the Blue Devils' impromptu "point guard committee" exercise in the absence of Tre Jones and you have one of the best individual performances by a player this year.
21. Justin Wright-Foreman, Hofstra Pride
Joe Mihalich's team hasn't lost a game since Thanksgiving weekend, and there's a slim but still reasonable chance that the Pride could keep that streak going all the way to the NCAA tournament. Hofstra's star is certainly helping those chances. Wright-Foreman is the focal point of this offense for a third consecutive season, and the 6-foot-2 senior has never been better from beyond the arc. Most memorably, he hit the 3 at the buzzer that gave the Pride a win over Northeastern at the beginning of January. This weekend, the Huskies will host the return match, but even if the win streak is snapped, Wright-Foreman is on a roll of his own.
22. PJ Washington, Kentucky Wildcats
With all due respect to the names closer to the top of this list, you can make a case that Washington is playing as well as anyone at the moment. In his past three outings, the 6-foot-8 sophomore has scored 67 points on 47 shots to go with 31 rebounds, six blocks and four steals. Washington's emergence has coincided with and/or accelerated something of a roster-wide great awakening. A Kentucky team that lost to Seton Hall just seven weeks ago now has far and away the league's best defense in SEC play and looks like a fit challenger for Tennessee.
23. Phil Booth, Villanova Wildcats
If you stopped paying attention to Villanova after the Michigan-Furman two-game losing streak or even after the Penn-Kansas two-game skid, you're missing some eerily familiar happenings on offense from Jay Wright's group. Specifically, Booth has emerged in Big East play as one of the most formidable perimeter threats ... ever? Put it this way: When an entire team devotes 55 percent of its shot attempts to tries from beyond the arc, its players are going to put up incredible numbers. Booth is averaging four made 3s per game in conference play, at 47 percent accuracy.
24. Matisse Thybulle, Washington Huskies
Customarily, when we deign to notice great defenders, we're isolating a single outsized skill being shown on that side of the ball. Thybulle, by stark contrast, is a confirmed methodological pluralist on D. In four of his past five games, he has either recorded five steals or blocked five shots. This week against USC, Thybulle recorded no fewer than seven takeaways. In Pac-12 play, Washington as a team has excelled at forcing both turnovers and misses, with the latter coming in particular abundance on the perimeter. Thybulle is doing his part to keep the Huskies excellent in both areas.
25. Antoine Davis, Detroit Mercy Titans
The men's Division I record for made 3s in a season is 162, set by Steph Curry at Davidson in 2007-08. Davis has connected from beyond the arc 96 times in 20 games. That means the 6-foot-1 freshman has to average a little more than seven made 3s for the rest of the regular season and this record's in the bag. Fine, that's a bit of a stretch. At his current rate of production, Davis would need the Titans to get to some form of postseason after the Horizon tournament if Curry is to be dethroned. Here's hoping UDM makes a miracle run and Mike Davis continues to give the young sharpshooter a very green light.