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Xavier is bringing back two sophomores who played enough minutes as freshmen to put together a meaningful sample of their skills. The first we looked at was JP Macura, whose up and down bench gunning left him with a very broad range of outcomes among his comparable players. The second of those is Trevon Bluiett, who brought a much more narrow spectrum of comps with his 11.0/4.2/1.9 on .422/.326/.746 as a freshman.
While Macura didn't have a single player with a similarity score of 900 or higher, Bluiett had five. One of those was also a freshman last year, and the other jumped to the draft after a single season. Since neither of them laid out any sort of development beyond the first year of college, they've been thrown out. What remains is a group of players - all of whom are rising seniors - who have put together fairly impressive careers to this point. Here they are:
Top performer: D'Vauntes Smith-Rivera, Georgetown (904)
| Season | GP | MPG | PPG | RPG | APG | FG% | 3FG% | FT% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freshman | 32 | 25.5 | 8.9 | 3.0 | 1.4 | 40.4 | 33.6 | 71.1 |
| Sophomore | 33 | 35.5 | 17.6 | 5.0 | 2.7 | 44.5 | 39.3 | 87.3 |
| Junior | 32 | 34.4 | 16.3 | 4.2 | 3.2 | 42.1 | 38.7 | 86.1 |
You don't need me to tell you about DSR. Xavier fans knew him as a verbal commit who backed away and then signed with Georgetown instead, then they got to know him even better as one of the best guards in the Big East. Smith-Rivera is a good three inches shorter than Bluiett, but he's a good rebounder who takes care of the ball and can score from all over. If Trevon developed along DSR's path, I'd be beyond delighted.
The middle road: Marcus Georges-Hunt, Georgia Tech (901)
| Season | GP | MPG | PPG | RPG | APG | FG% | 3FG% | FT% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freshman | 31 | 28.9 | 10.8 | 4.9 | 1.5 | 42.6 | 33.3 | 62.9 |
| Sophomore | 33 | 31.2 | 11.7 | 4.3 | 2.1 | 41.6 | 34.1 | 67.4 |
| Junior | 30 | 30.9 | 13.6 | 5.5 | 1.8 | 43.1 | 28.8 | 76.3 |
Like Bluiett, Georges-Hunt was asked to step in and contribute right away on the wing, and - also like Trevon - he did just that. From that freshman year though, he never really got any better. That's not to say that he got meaningfully worse, because he really didn't. A bump in getting to and converting at the line more or less balanced out his declining three-point numbers, and his usage rate has taken a steady climb. He's more or less getting the same results as he did as a freshman, just slightly more often.
The cautionary tale: Rasheed Sulaimon, Duke (905)
| Season | GP | MPG | PPG | RPG | APG | FG% | 3FG% | FT% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freshman | 36 | 29.2 | 11.6 | 3.4 | 1.9 | 42.4 | 37.1 | 80.2 |
| Sophomore | 34 | 25.6 | 9.9 | 2.4 | 2.4 | 40.2 | 41.0 | 76.8 |
| Junior | 20 | 19.2 | 7.5 | 2.0 | 1.8 | 41.3 | 40.4 | 66.7 |
Sulaimon came on to the scene as an efficient and effective scorer from beyond the arc who could also get to the rim and score. As a sophomore, he was still hitting threes but his efficiency from inside the arc and at the line dropped off. His junior year was kind of a public relations nightmare and he ended up getting dismissed from the school as a result. His on-court performance was pretty solid all through his time at Duke, but his minutes declined every year before he was excused from the program.
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All three of these guys can really play ball. The fact that DSR is a good comp has more to do with how unique he is as a player than portending a more perimeter-oriented future for Trevon. I don't see Bluiett falling off the rails off-court like Sulaimon did, and I would be surprised to see his shooting numbers drop like Georges-Hunt's. My gut tells me that he will be a stud for three or four years at X; what do you think?