Texas Tech basketball: Scouting Joel Ntambwe and how he fits on the 2020-21 Red Raiders
Ntambwe is a fluid scorer who can score in various ways
We aren’t going to harp on the fact that 14 of Ntambwe’s 18 points in this game came in the final seven minutes when the fat lady had not only sung her song but she had already made it home and opened up a bottle of wine for the evening. But I will say that I was disappointed to see that he didn’t assert himself in that area of the game as his team struggled to score in the first half.
UNLV had their entire offense run through point guard Amauri Hardy, who Tech recruited this offseason as a grad transfer but who decided to play at Oregon. He had 11 shot attempts in 24 minutes, one more than Ntambwe took in 28 minutes, and as we have indicated, most of Ntambwe’s came late in the evening.
What was surprising is that the Utah State forwards that guarded Ntambwe were shorter and must less athletic and should have been players he could exploit off the bounce yet he didn’t attack relentlessly as he should in order to exploit those mismatches. At times he did that and it was effective as he was able to earn seven free throws (he made five that night and was a 75.2% shooter for the year) but he didn’t do that often enough when his team needed to stop the bleeding.
Some of that looked to be the natural inclination of a freshman to defer to Hardy, who was clearly the team’s alpha dog despite being just a sophomore. But so too must the lack of urgency that the entire team displayed that night be credited as a factor.
There’s a reason that Menzies was fired after that season and it was evident that his team simply lacked the type of passion that quality teams play with. In fact, UNLV’s overall talent and athleticism were greater than Utah State’s but the lacked the innate toughness that the Aggies brought to the fight. We have to belive that Ntambwe will take on a more aggressive mindset when playing for Beard this year.
When he did take the ball off the dribble though, he was fun to watch. He has a patented move where he drives left and spins back to the right while maintaining his dribble. Off of that move, he knocked down a couple of contested jumpers from near the free-throw line and he also got to the rim a number of times where he drew fouls.
It’s a tough move to stop because his length forces defenders to throw their momentum into cutting off his drive to the left, thus making his spin back to the right lethal. He even made a few nice passes to open teammates off of this move and that’s the type of one-on-one ability that Tech was lacking in crucial situations this past season.
Truly playing like a large guard, Ntambwe is fluid with the ball in his hands and is not afraid to pull the trigger on a step-back jumper or 3-pointer. That’s one way in which he’s much different than Santos-Silva or even Holyfield.
On the night, he was 3-5 from behind the arc and his outside stroke was as seamless and natural as you could ask for. He shot 38.6% from 3-point range that season and made 44 shots from deep so expect that to be a sizeable component of his game in Lubbock, which will help draw defenders away from the bucket and open up driving lanes.