Texas Tech basketball: 5 players to know from the West Region
Ja Morant – Murray State
Outside of Duke’s Zion Williamson, no player in the nation has received more love from the national media than point guard Ja Morant of the No. 12 seeded Murray State racers who open against Marquette. The 6-foot-3, 175-pound guard is the consensus No. 2 pick in this year’s draft behind Williamson and he is the type of explosive guard that can take over in March.
At 24.6 points and 10.0 assists per game, he is on pace to average a double-double this year. The sophomore is as quick with his first step as any player in the nation and his insane athleticism allows him to finish with authority at the rim.
He is not a deadly 3-point shooter but at 33.6% he is good enough to be respected from behind the arc. He averages 4.8 shots from deep per game and it would be best for a team to try to make him turn into a long-range shooter, but that is tough to do because he is so adept at going to the basket.
He is drawing companions to some of the greatest point guards of the last two decades such as Iverson and Russell Westbrook. And like both of those players did in college, he does virtually everything for Murray State. Morant leads the Racers in points, assists and steals and his second in rebounds.
But though Morant is likely to be the No. 2 pick in the draft this year, I don’t know that he is a better collegiate player than Jarrett Culver. Certainly, he is a flashier player and he is far more aggressive with the ball but his offensive game is not as well-rounded. He does not have the inside game that Culver has and Murray State can’t post him up or count on him to consistently knock down a mid-range jumper when his ability to get to the basket is stopped.
What’s more, he is nowhere the defender that the Big 12 Player of the Year is. At 6-foot-6, Culver is able to guard as many as four positions on the floor and he is strong enough to hold his own against physical players. Morant could be pushed around a bit by bigger guards like Culver who could exploit him in mismatches created by pick-and-rolls or Tech’s scree-heavy motion offense.
Still, when a player like Ja Morant gets hot, he is capable of putting his team on his back like Steph Curry did in 2008 for Davidson when he took the No. 10 seeded Wildcats to the Elite 8. If Tech runs into Ja Morant, it will be in the Elite 8 meaning the nation’s best defensive team may have to stop the tournament’s most explosive guard in order to get to the Final Four.