Richard Coren

NEWS: Kamary Diakite, a 6-8 forward, is exploring the college route for this upcoming season, per agents @BoscoGiorgio98 and @ArtursKalnitis Diakite averaged 16.9 points and 6.7 rebounds on 48% shooting in the Swiss NBL this season — averaged 15.9 and 7.9 rebounds on 51.2% shooting for Switzerland in last summer’s U18 EuroBasket. Would enter Division 1 as a freshman (2007 born).

What are the chances that Devin Vanterpool ends up being Providence's best player next year? Analytically driven portal rankings will ding him for less-than-stellar efficiency and a 23rd percentile Asst/TO Ratio at FAU, but his profile looks REALLY attractive outside of those areas. At a foundational level, if you get nothing more than a plus defender who shoots 37% from the arc on 11 attempts per 100, that's still a highly impactful piece. Everything else on the ball is icing on the cake. He's also a pretty elite positional rebounder. The upside resides in his efficiency picking up, and I think there are a couple routes to that happening. When you start adding context to his last season, it only gets more intriguing 1. Shot diet improvement. Per ShotQuality, FAU ranked 201st in Rim+3 Rate last year. USF under Hodgson? 3rd highest nationally. Bulls were also ranked 1st in Shot Selection overall. 62% of Vanterpool's 2PAs came at the rim, and he only shot 51% once he got there, both of which are pretty pedestrian I can also waive away some of the rim efficiency concerns when you bake in that he was battling an ankle injury for a good portion of conference play and ultimately missed the final 7 games of the year in addition to a couple others prior to that. If he improves his rim numbers with full health and he gets a pickup in shot selection in Hodgson's offense, then it's pretty easy to see his efficiency rise 2. Trajectory. Vanterpool went from rotational afterthought to the 1A option in one season. If you look at players who made the largest usage jump YoY, he ranks in the 95th percentile nationally. However, if you factor in how little he played 2 years ago, you are talking about one of the biggest minute+usage jumps in the entire country I don't think it requires much projection to envision him taking another step in terms of being a full minute, heavy usage guy from the jump. It's actually his 4.2 FC/40 last year that may be the biggest cap to his minute ceiling, if anything You could even argue that his bloodlines are another possible tailwind for him making strides Then you have the fact that someone like Hodgson, who I rate VERY highly as a talent evaluator, brings him in from a conference foe last year. Doesn't hurt when you score an efficient 48 points combined in the 2 games FAU played USF 3. Scheme change & supporting cast. FAU was outside the T300 in Assist Rate and outside the T200 in BOTH 3PRate and 3P%. It was a lot of Vanterpool & Carlyle dribbling the air out of the ball in isolation when they couldn't push in transition. Vanterpool was the only guy on the team to shoot 36%+ from 3. USF was on the other end of the spectrum last year as they were T100 in 3PRate and 50th in Assist Rate. That 3PRate the Bulls posted is also INCREDIBLE when you take into account that they're also an elite rim frequency offense (literally #1 in Near Proximity Frequency per Haslam). For perspective, other teams who ranked around them in rim frequency had 3PRate rankings of: 260th (OKST), 331st (Miami), and 230th (Florida). Unless Byrd finally puts it together from behind the arc, I would tend to lean towards this Providence team being somewhere between 'fine' and 'good' from the 3P line. Byrd and Page are not knockdown shooters by any means, but they do possess at least SOME shot gravity to keep offenses honest, and Mela is a bit of a wildcard given he shot 38% from 3 in Big East play but only on ~1.5 attempts per game. FWIW, he did hit 8 of his 14 threes the last four games of the year. Sabol requires no additional justification from the arc beyond his insane numbers. Providence can probably also get away with Sabol's lack of defense more than many teams when you have a trio like Vanterpool, Byrd, and Page on that side of the ball. Better spacing with (likely) more shot gravity around him means fewer help defenders get sent at him. Less help defense means that the two weak areas of his analytical profile (rim efficiency & turnovers) are well positioned to benefit/improve. If those metrics improve, you're going to have one of the more impactful players in the Big East with everything else he does peripherally