Is Texas Tech's JT Toppin college basketball's next breakout star?
Investigating the development of a potential All-American, or more, in Lubbock
Early-season stat watching is a fun thing. Sometimes it can tell you some things, like ‘hey, Mark Sears is having an insane start to the season and he’s probably going to make the leap to being an All-American.’ Other times, you become convinced that a guy named Justin Bean might be the Player of the Year.
But! I promise that in general, stats from the first couple of weeks can be useful. Not for everything, of course, but last year, of the 15 guys that ended up on one of the AP All-American teams, 10 were among the top 50 in Box Plus-Minus. Generally, if you’re really good in November, you will probably also be really good in February and March. The same goes for teams, which we’ve found before: if you’re good now, you’re probably still going to be good later. You should already know at least half of your 1 and 2 seeds by the end of this month, historically speaking, and the same generally goes for All-American teams.
So, hey, I get a kick out of going around and seeing who’s on the various Player of the Year leaderboards. Lots of ways to do that. There’s the old favorite of the KenPom Player of the Year:
Or perhaps the Torvik Player of the Year:
Or these numbers via CBB Analytics, which uses Kevin Pelton’s Wins Above Replacement Player metric but per 40 minutes:
There are numerous other stats, but these are three. I like them. There are four players that make an appearance on all three lists:
Ryan Kalkbrenner of Creighton, the preseason Big East Player of the Year;
Kam Jones of Marquette, a preseason Third-Team All-American at CBS Sports and generally seen by most as a top-15 player in the sport;
Johni Broome of Auburn, a consensus First-Team All-American;
and JT Toppin of Texas Tech, a player who was on neither of the Big 12’s preseason all-conference teams and wasn’t on any top 100 players list.
If I told you that the consensus three best players in the sport right now are the top three names on the above list, you probably wouldn’t be that surprised. Maybe you’d be curious why Cooper Flagg or Alex Karaban aren’t there but frankly, three guys everyone had in their preseason top 15 being this good isn’t a surprise.
Toppin has fully earned this status, though, no matter your preferred statistical slicing. Through five games, he’s averaging 20.8 PPG and 11.2 RPG; he’d be the first freshman or sophomore to do so in a full season since Santi Aldama in 2020-21. Given he plays in the Big East and not the Patriot League, I doubt it’ll hold, but his start is still quite notable. There are weird sample-size quirks every year and odd standouts, but Toppin stands out pretty much everywhere and isn’t dependent on a scalding-hot start from three (like Lukosius) or a 91% hit rate from two (like Kalkbrenner).
What Toppin’s doing statistically is marvelous. His current stats, per Torvik, allvamong fellow high-major players:
+5.6 PRPG! (22nd-best)
+12.8 Box Plus-Minus (24th)
135 ORtg (7th-best among those with a 25% USG or higher)
26% OREB% (1st nationally)
72% 2PT (17th-best among those with 25+ two-point attempts)
One of 22 players with a 5% Block% and 3% Steal% (7.6% Block%, 3.6% Steal% for Toppin)
Taken all together: one of eight players in the nation with a +5 PRPG!, +10 BPM, and a 130+ ORtg on 25%+ USG. The others: Broome, Jaylen Blakes, Kam Jones, Eric Dixon, and Dawson Garcia.
Among all-in-one style metrics, it’s very hard to slice and dice any that place Toppin as something other than one of the 10 best players in college basketball through 2.5 weeks. Will that hold? Who knows. But based on last year, perhaps we should’ve seen all of this coming.