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Texas Tech basketball: Scouting Georgetown transfer Mac McClung

By Matthew Conner

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 21: Mac McClung #2 of the Georgetown Hoyas reacts after a three pointer during the first half of the game against the Texas Longhorns at Madison Square Garden on November 21, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 21: Mac McClung #2 of the Georgetown Hoyas reacts after a three pointer during the first half of the game against the Texas Longhorns at Madison Square Garden on November 21, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images) /
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Mac McClung #2 of the Georgetown Hoyas looks to pass. (Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images)
Mac McClung #2 of the Georgetown Hoyas looks to pass. (Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images) /

McClung is not a point guard

After leaving Georgetown, McClung’s unofficial agent said that the NBA wanted to see more of his “client” playing in a point guard role to showcase his ability to facilitate within the offense.  (Let’s assume this is an agent who is advising McClung and who has not entered into a financial agreement with the player yet as that would not be permissible by NCAA rules.)

"“The feedback that he got from [NBA] teams was that they wanted to see him facilitating more,” agent Daniel Hazan told the Washington Post. “Being more of a point guard role, etc. I’m not saying he couldn’t have gotten that at Georgetown, but he didn’t showcase that at Georgetown. He didn’t get the opportunity really to showcase that. He was playing off the ball.”"

But make no mistake, I don’t want McClung playing the point guard role for Tech this year.  That’s not what he is.

First of all, let’s acknowledge that in Chris Beard’s motion offense, there is no set point guard.  In fact, Tech hasn’t had a classic point guard since Keenan Evans.  Rather, each guard on the floor (and most of the forwards) are asked to move the ball, create off the dribble, and find open teammates.

McClung can do all of those.  But to think that he is going to be a primary ball-handler doesn’t seem to be wise.

That’s because he is simply too risky with the ball.  He seems to have picked up quite a few bad habits during his time and there’s no way to know how much Georgetown head coach Patrick Ewing tried to coach them out of his game.

The most probable is his propensity for throwing what my junior high basketball coach, Dennis Garcia, used to label as “one-handed crap passes”. (Obviously, we threw so many of those that the term is permanently embedded in my basketball brain and I could hear Coach G yelling about them even as I watched McClung some 25 years later.)

Much like Chris Clarke this past season, McClung has rarely envisioned a pass that he doesn’t think he can make, and that often leads to some wild cross-court flings or some attempts at pulling off the spectacular. That’s going to drive Chris Beard crazy and it is why you don’t want McClung as your main distributor.

In the Syracuse game, he had no turnovers but there were some moments when he was fortunate with the way the ball bounced after leaving his hands.  But against Creighton, he committed six.  That was a season-high.

On the year, he turned the ball over 3.7 times per game and his career average is 4 per game. Tech was led by Clarke’s 2.2 giveaways per game this season.  That drove fans and Beard nuts at times and that was 1.5 fewer than McClung averaged.

So the best way to utilize McClung’s playmaking ability is to pick your spots.  Allow him to attack at strategic moments and exploit mismatches but don’t ask him to run your offense or get others going on a possession-by-possession basis.  That’s just not his game.

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