Several prospects that the Wizards should evaluate took the court in Brooklyn.
Earlier in the day, I gave an in-depth write-up on Duke’s Jared McCain, the top performer I saw live during Brooklyn’s opening weekend NCAA Tournament games. He was far from the only NBA Draft prospect to turn in a good performance, however, so I’ll talk about some of the others here.
McCain’s teammate, 6’5 sophomore Tyrese Proctor, also had a pretty good opening weekend. Proctor was a projected lottery pick going into the season but the combination of inconsistency and injury seemed to prevent him from taking the leap many envisioned. He currently sits at 44th on Rookie Scale’s consensus Big Board.
Proctor doesn’t really pop in one aspect of the game but is solid in several areas and typically fills up the box score in multiple columns. For the year, he averaged 10.6 points, 3 rebounds, 3.6 assists, .7 steals, and only 1.3 turnovers. He made 36.3% of his five three-point attempts per game.
In their opening game in Brooklyn, he recorded 13 points (5-14, 3-9 from three) and 4 rebounds. In their second game, he had 18 points (7-15, 4-10 from three), 3 rebounds, and 5 assists. He was also pretty solid defensively.
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Duke center Kyle Filipowski was mostly underwhelming. He finished their first game with 3 points (0-1 from the field), 12 rebounds, and 3 blocks. In their second game, he had 14 points and 5 rebounds. He largely just used his size to overwhelm mid-major opponents but didn’t display much of the offensive skill or floor-spacing that’s likely to make him a first-round selection.
Connecticut also had two projected first-round picks competing this weekend in 6’5 freshman guard Stephon Castle and 7’2 sophomore center Donovan Clingan. In their opener, Clingan had 19 points (9-11), 8 rebounds, and 4 assists. Castle had 14 points (6-11, 1-2 from three), 5 rebounds, and 4 assists. Both were very solid although UCONN was in cruise-control against Stetson.
Connecticut’s second-round match-up against Northwestern was a much better opportunity to really scout both players. Clingan almost had a triple double, going for 14 points (5-7), 14 rebounds, and 8 blocks. Northwestern looked completely flummoxed as to how to score anywhere inside the three-point line when Clingan was in the game. It was a dominant defensive impressive.
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What Clingan did on the interior, Castle did on the perimeter. He had a quiet night offensively with 7 points (3-6, 1-2 from three), 2 rebounds, and 1 assist. But he seemed to relish taking on the toughest defensive assignment, hounding Northwestern’s star guard Boo Buie all night.
Castle picked up Buie full-court, fought through screens, and gave up 0 points while guarding Buie. Buie finished the night with 9 points on 2-15 shooting. Castle picked up a few bogus fouls that limited him to 25 minutes and that’s when Buie was able to collect most of his points. This was as good a perimeter-based defensive performance as I’ve seen all year.
It would have been nice to see Castle look to be more aggressive on the other end as he seemed capable of beating his defender off the dribble. However, UCONN was up around 30 points midway through the first half and didn’t need Castle’s offensive contributions.
Given the context of him playing on the deepest team in college basketball, we don’t really get to see the full extent of what Castle can bring to the table. This makes for a difficult evaluation as the sample size of him taking over games is pretty limited.
This is very anecdotal but, for what it’s worth, he seemed very comfortable shooting the ball before both games when his feet were set. Shooting off movement is where the results seemed to vary wildly. Pre-draft workouts are likely going to dictate where in the lottery he goes as a team will have to convince itself he can knock down enough shots to keep defenses honest. If I were a general manager, I think I’ve seen enough to be willing to take that gamble.