Xavier 2016 season in review: JP Macura player report card

Thanks to everyone who participated in our second annual Banners on the Parkway postseason player report cards. We'll be breaking down each player's grades for the rest of this week and on into next week, where we'll reveal the top finisher according to the community. We'll also be assigning and explaining our own grades of each player. We'll start with the player who got the lowest community ranking and work our way up to the MVP.

Everybody loves JP! I mean, not everybody. Certainly not Butler fans. I know Georgetown fans don't really, either. UC fans certainly don't. Pretty much everyone who plays against him seems to harbor a certain resentment towards him. So it's not a universal affection, but the community here loves him, and no wonder. The dude is everywhere on the floor, Xavier's very own Frank Lampard in his prime, showing up at one end line and then the other and covering all points in between with a frenetic brand of semi-controlled but usually productive chaos. Eight scholarship guys into a roster that put together the best regular season in program history, we have our first community A (albeit an A-).

Offense: A

JP was the most efficient offensive player on the team, and no wonder. He may appear crazy out there, but he's crazy like a fox. First he's knocking down jump shots. Then you find out that your identification of him as a shooter was entirely false, and he's skittering into the lane for one of his cheeky finishes at or around the rim. The he’s flying through to grab an offensive board that Xavier’s big men weren’t able to track down. Throw in a handle and distribution game that calls to mind Pistol Pete on occasion and JP often makes the defense look like the butt of a bad joke.

Defense: B

For as much cheek as JP shows on offense, he's almost as crafty on the defensive end. He really comes to life on the top of the 1-3-1 zone, hounding opponents into having to toss loopy passes back and forth 30 feet from the rim to find some space to penetrate. His IQ is high up there, and it rarely takes him more than a possession or two to adjust to how each individual team wants to attack the zone. Man is an entirely different story, and Macura's ability to defend on an island is not great, and he occasionally gets caught with his pants down on a rotation. If we were to split defense into zone and man, JP would be an A in the former and a C in the latter. We don't, so... B.

Overall: A

Macura was Coach Mack's wild card off the bench this year. For a team that often started games looking a touch stagnant, he was a great infusion of energy. Whether or not the things were productive, JP was always going to make things happen. He was like a pebble in the opponents' collective shoe out there, constantly reminding them of his presence in ways that they didn't find entirely pleasant. You'd figure he has a couple more years left on campus, so his breakout sophomore season just sets the stage for more great things to come.