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John GasawayESPN Insider
This is an especially exciting time to update that storied tradition, known as the top 25 player rankings, for the 201-22 men’s college basketball season. We think, we hope, we borderline demand that this will, at last, be a “normal” season.
Gonzaga was ranked No. 1 by a comfortable margin when the AP preseason poll was released last week. Not surprisingly, the Bulldogs also dominate our preseason player rankings.
Junior Drew Timme, freshman Chet Holmgren and senior Andrew Nembhard all made the cut, landing among the top 13 spots. UCLA‘s Johnny Juzang, a familiar face to Gonzaga fans after he scored 29 points against the Bulldogs in the Final Four, also appears early on the list.
A quick reminder that, as always, this is not a mock draft. It is instead a ranking based purely on a player’s anticipated college impact this season.
Here are the top 25 players in the nation for 2021-22:
1. Drew Timme, Gonzaga Bulldogs
In the understandable fuss in 2020-21 over an almost-perfect Gonzaga season, there was perhaps another story in Spokane that didn’t grab as much attention as it should have. After a freshman season in which he functioned as the highly capable reserve behind and occasionally alongside Filip Petrusev, Timme emerged in 2020-21 as a legitimate national player of the year candidate. It was a great leap forward, and Timme made it look easy. He and Luka Garza were the only high-major players in the nation to average at least seven made 2-point field goals per game last season. (Kofi Cockburn came very close.)
A fair share of Timme’s makes come in the Bulldogs’ lethal transition game, but he’s also happy to score or make the correct pass in a half-court set. On defense, the 6-foot-10 Timme flashed some modest shot-blocking chops as a relatively foul-prone freshman reserve. Then he became the man on offense as a sophomore. The fouling declined along with the blocks in a season in which the Zags played just two games decided by single digits.
If one grants the premise that the UCLA we saw in the NCAA tournament is what we’re going to get more of in 2021-22, then Juzang could be on the cusp of something quite special. He had an incredible tournament run, converting 59% of his 2s while personally accounting for 33% of the Bruins’ shot attempts during his minutes. Not to mention they were clutch minutes from Juzang, obviously: UCLA played overtimes against Michigan State, Alabama and Gonzaga and defeated Michigan by two in regulation. Mick Cronin’s junior might be the most pressure-tested player in the nation, and it’s possible Juzang is still improving. A career 87% shooter at the line, he might see more of his 3s fall than he did as a freshman at Kentucky or as a sophomore in Westwood.
Give Paul Mills credit for what has to be the most remarkable re-recruitment in recent years. Somehow the ORU coach managed to hold onto Abmas after the entire country watched him vanquish Ohio State and Florida and push Arkansas to the 40th minute in the NCAA tournament. The run to within three points of the Elite Eight was perhaps a teachable reminder that, yes, incredible player stats recorded in the Summit League can translate into losses for Big Ten and SEC opponents. Abmas played an almost unheard of 96% Oral Roberts’ minutes against Division I opponents last season, and the 6-1 scoring point guard split his attempts almost exactly between 2s and 3s. He was listed at a svelte 165 pounds as a sophomore last season, but the bottom-line results have been unmistakable.
The NCAA has suspended Cockburn for three games for selling “institutionally issued apparel and memorabilia” in June, prior to his decision to withdraw from the NBA draft. Once he is back in the lineup, however, he’s likely to reassert his status as one of the most physically dominant post scorers in the country. The 7-0 junior’s excellence in the field of frequent dunking is well documented, but Cockburn’s relatively low-foul dominance on the glass at both ends of the floor also gives a boost to Brad Underwood’s team. Iffy foul shooting is part of the package deal for a featured scorer who still ranked in the top 60 nationally last season for true shooting percentage.
We know from experience that a small number of one-and-done-level freshmen really will dazzle and thrill us at the college level — we just don’t know in advance which ones will do so. This is where we issue our occasional reminder that Zion Williamson was a preseason second-team All-ACC selection in 2018-19. Banchero, on the other hand, was just named preseason ACC Player of the Year. Will the 6-10 freshman live up to the expectations? Possibly! Reports hint that Duke held one of those not very “secret” scrimmages against Villanova, and Banchero supposedly put up a double-double against an opponent ranked No. 4 in the AP preseason poll. The young man is projected by ESPN as the No. 2 pick in the 2022 NBA draft.
Jackson-Davis has never played for an Indiana team that shot better than 32.6% on its 3s. If the hoops gods are listening, they will surely bestow upon Mike Woodson’s rotation at least a Division I average level of perimeter accuracy this season and thus give Jackson-Davis some room to operate. Not that he hasn’t excelled just the same. In possibly the finest game of his career, Jackson-Davis erupted for 34 points at home in February in a 78-71 loss to Michigan State in which his teammates shot 4-of-19 from beyond the arc. He’s a tireless free throw-generating machine who posts a gaudy number of fouls drawn per 40 minutes while playing a significantly higher share of the minutes than FD/40 peers such as Cockburn or Scotty Pippen Jr.
In naming Martin as the Big 12 Preseason Player of the Year, the league’s coaches demonstrated a laudable focus on proven results. It’s not every day you get a transfer who has already scored 1,700 points. By selecting Lawrence as the spot where he’ll ply his trade for a fifth season, Martin further strengthened what was already shaping up on paper to be another very strong KU team. The onetime Arizona State Sun Devil is a skilled scoring point guard who creates his own shot when he’s not delivering the ball to an open teammate. His first career 20-point outing came at the expense of the Jayhawks in ASU’s 95-85 win in Lawrence in December 2017. Now Martin is on Bill Self’s side.
Michigan’s 7-1 post scorer might have seemed like he arrived out of nowhere last season as a recruit who’d be ranked all the way “down” in the 30s or 40s nationally, but in truth he’s already a polished performer. Dickinson will turn 21 about five games into his sophomore season and is but a few weeks younger than celebrated junior Timme. As a freshman, Dickinson was the featured scorer and invaluable rim defender on a UM team that was ranked in the top five nationally throughout February and March and came within three points of the Final Four. Now Juwan Howard has brought in ESPN’s No. 1 ranked recruiting class, and the Wolverines’ sophomore will doubtless continue to wreak havoc at both ends of the floor.
That sound you heard in July was the 7-1 Holmgren setting Gonzaga and, yes, NBA hearts aflutter with his MVP award-winning performance at the FIBA U19 World Cup in Latvia. With a 7-6 wingspan, the freshman recorded nearly three blocks per contest despite averaging just 21 minutes. Holmgren also shot 7-of-13 on his 3s over six games and contributed five points to a crucial 11-0 run in the final that lifted Team USA over France. He’s projected by ESPN as the No. 1 pick in the 2022 draft.
After playing alongside Mikal Bridges, Donte DiVincenzo and Jalen Brunson and even scoring four points in the 2018 national title game, Gillespie is still here, a true grand old man of Villanova hoops. (We see you, Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree. You’re still here too.) The veteran point guard is making preseason All-American teams left and right, and with good reason. Jay Wright’s system churns out special individual seasons, and Gillespie charted a big increase in efficiency during an injury-shortened senior campaign in 2020-21.
In two seasons at Vanderbilt, Pippen has recorded a striking trajectory as a 6-3 scoring point guard. He shouldered just about the heaviest workload on offense in the nation as a sophomore, but at the same time his overall effectiveness increased dramatically compared with his first year. No player on this list made more free throws last season on a per-game basis. Now Pippen has been tapped as the preseason SEC Player of the Year.
Liddell might do more for his team across the board than any consensus Big Ten Player of the Year candidate. He carries as heavy a load on offense as Dickinson, makes roughly the same percentage of his 2s as Jackson-Davis, posts a block percentage similar to that of Cockburn and makes more 3s and records a higher assist rate than all of the above. Liddell came down the stretch last season cold from outside, going 0-of-7 on 3s against Illinois in the Big Ten title game. A likely correction there will make the 6-7 junior more formidable still.
People forget, but before Jalen Suggs’ spectacular game-winner in overtime against UCLA in the Final Four, the man of the hour for Gonzaga was Nembhard with his eight assists. The Bruins were shooting lights-out on 2-point jumpers, thus limiting the Bulldogs’ transition opportunities. With the game largely confined to a half-court contest, good things happened for the Zags with the ball in Nembhard’s hands as he ran the pick-and-roll. He brings all the parts together in Mark Few’s offense.
Williams has created and confidently taken shots in volume ever since he was a freshman coming off the bench for a team built around Carsen Edwards. Now it is Williams who assumes an Edwards-size role in the Purdue offense, a function he performs superbly. In addition to making 2s in bulk, the 6-10 senior posted the team’ highest assist rate adjusted for court time last season while also distinguishing himself as one of the nation’s strongest offensive rebounders.
Last season was McCormack’s first on a KU roster without Udoka Azubuike, and, after a bit of a rough start, he rose to the occasion. In Big 12 play he connected on 53% of his 2s and on 83% of his tries at the line. Kansas hasn’t had a volume scorer anchored to the paint and hitting free throws since Perry Ellis (and even he shot the occasional 3). If the 6-10 senior stays out of foul trouble he will be a strong Big 12 player of the year candidate.
Against the backdrop of a long-term decline in offensive rebound rates across Division I, the number of head coaches who still green-light second chances is always dwindling. Give Tshiebwe credit, then, for choosing his transfer destination wisely. In John Calipari the 6-9 junior has located one of the few figures nationally who still values offensive boards as highly as Tshiebwe’s previous coach, Bob Huggins. Don’t be surprised if UK’s new arrival leads the nation in offensive rebound rate or comes very close.
Kelvin Sampson has thrived at UH by recruiting guys who allegedly “can’t” shoot and who instead pursue offensive rebounds with abandon. Still, even Sampson needs at least a player or two who can indeed shoot. Last year at Houston those guys were Sasser and Quentin Grimes. This year it will be Sasser plus others to be named later. The 6-1 junior is a career 82% shooter at the line and last season he attempted more 3s than anyone on this list save Abmas.
Ivey was already a player to watch after his 26-point outburst in Purdue’s otherwise ill-fated overtime loss to North Texas in the round of 64. Then he made an even bigger impact alongside teammates such as Holmgren, Patrick Baldwin Jr. and Kennedy Chandler at the FIBA U19 World Cup. The Boilermakers’ combination of the 6-4 sophomore’s dynamic scoring and the usual West Lafayette great wall of size in the paint (see Williams and Zach Edey) will pose a challenge to the rest of the Big Ten.
There is hope for those who struggle with free throws. Aluma was a career 57% shooter at the line before he connected 72% of the time last year. It has been a wild ride for the 6-9 junior who started his career as a never-shoot freshman reserve at Wofford. Still, Mike Young saw something promising in Aluma. Now both of them are at Virginia Tech and Aluma has been named to the watch list for the Karl Malone award honoring the year’s best power forward.
Texas fans who don’t make it a practice to follow Big Ten basketball are in for a treat. Former Minnesota Golden Gopher Carr is an absolute warrior as a scoring point guard (who’s also a former Pitt Panther). Granted, he’s a warrior who played for a team last season when the coach was soon fired. Successes were therefore relative, but even in defeat, Carr’s 41-point tsunami with four steals at Nebraska was a tour de force. The 6-2 senior will make a splash in the Big 12.
Jaquez was the most accurate Bruin from the field among players who saw regular minutes last season. That accuracy was of course helped along by the fact that he was playing a supporting role alongside Juzang, but the success the 6-6 junior has recorded to date suggests he could be in line for more touches. Certainly Jaquez gave Gonzaga everything it could handle at the Final Four. His 19-point effort against the Bulldogs in support of Juzang’s 29 could be a preview of things to come.
As a senior who has never averaged more than 16 minutes in a season, Mayer lacks the track record one usually sees on this list. Then again, this particular senior arrived at more or less the same time as a flock of rugged standouts who won the 2021 national title with relative ease. Everything we’ve seen from Mayer thus far, up to and including his 17 points in 24 minutes against Wisconsin in the round of 32, suggests the 6-9 scorer will be ready for his moment.
The players on this list who averaged three made 3s per game last season form a really exclusive club. There’s Boehiem, and there’s Abmas. That’s it. Boeheim has connected more than 200 times from beyond the arc over the course of three seasons. His perimeter scoring was the good-news story in an Orange offense last season that otherwise struggled to find the range from either side of the arc in ACC play (but did at least record a high volume of attempts).
When he’s not Xavier’s rugged 6-9 post scorer, Freemantle’s also the guy who got a green light on 3s last season from coach Travis Steele. The result was 32% shooting from out there, and Freemantle’s up-and-down record at the line over two seasons is little help in determining if he’s likely to improve from the perimeter. If he does, though, it will be big. The junior’s already an outstanding defensive rebounder who converts 59% of his 2s while sharing featured-scorer duties with Paul Scruggs.
Expectations are high in Cattaraugus County, New York. St. Bonaventure is ranked in the top 25 for the first time since 1971, and the Bonnies are the A-10’s first unanimous preseason selection to win the league in seven years. You tend to expect big things when you know opponents won’t make 2s. The A-10 converted less than 45% of its tries inside the arc against SBU last season, which was largely the doing of Osunniyi. The 6-10 senior excels at both blocking shots and staying on the floor.