NCAA Weekly, Vol. 5.1: Just Blaze
the most fun team in America takes center-ish stage
I promote our friend Simon Gerszberg of Shot Quality pretty often and genuinely really like his work. I think the way his site looks at the process versus the result is something I identify with immensely and try to embody here, too. Never too high, never too low. So I’ll admit my genuine surprise every time I’ve logged onto Shot Quality for the last two weeks and my surprise when Simon posted the one-month SQ 2022-23 rankings on Twitter this week.
Most of the top six is pretty fine and agreeable, and it’s obviously worth noting the pretty small gap from #2 to #10. It’s a young season, after all. But look who stands alone at the top: Conference USA’s UAB Blazers. These guys were a 12 seed last year who got in after winning their conference tournament; who among us can forget the week that everyone else discovered Jelly Walker?
The good news for you, college basketball fan and reader, is that Walker is back and averaging a truly hilarious 25.7 PPG. The better news for us, the viewers, is that UAB as a whole is better and somehow significantly more fun than last year’s team, which was already a delight to watch.
In preparation for this article, something I’ve wanted to write for a couple weeks, I watched four of the Blazers’ games: Toledo, Georgia, Jacksonville, and South Alabama. Despite losing one of those four affairs, every game emphasized something important about this UAB team: they are absurd offensively.
They play faster than all but three teams in America when they have the ball, and they’re the 11th-most efficient offense (not adjusted for schedule) in 2022-23. They’re dominating at the rim. They’re dominating on the boards. They have more dunks than any other team in America. They have a legitimate massive star in Walker. They’ve got a fascinating supporting cast rounding into shape. Oh, and they block a lot of shots, force a lot of turnovers, and run a full-court press on the other side of the ball.
I cannot get enough of these guys. I don’t plan on attempting to convince you of the same, as it’s your call, but we’ll explore a few reasons why I’m ready to declare the UAB Blazers the 2022-23 College Basketball Stream Team of the Year. I’m doing this just in time for the highest-profile game they’ll play possibly until March: a road game at borderline top 25 team West Virginia on Saturday at 6 PM ET on ESPN+. There’s plenty of great basketball on this weekend, but watch these guys. I doubt you’ll regret it. Here’s why.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve decided to make this post free, but if you’d like more of these team-specific posts and are new to the site, I do a series called NCAA Weekly where we profile at least one team (if not multiple) and go into a lot of stats and video stuff. Here’s the link to sign up at $30/year; considering it works out to essentially being $1/post on the NCAA stuff, it’s worth it. IMO JMO TIFWIW
Jelly jam
Well, here’s the most obvious reason you should be watching these guys play: Jordan, aka “Jelly” Walker. On the off-chance you’re unfamiliar with this human dynamo, I mean…just watch?
A year ago, Walker was a breakout star in part to his amazing Conference USA Tournament semifinal performance against MTSU, but he’d put together quite the season even without that. 20.3 PPG and 4.9 APG are legitimately terrific numbers for any player, but early in the ‘22-23 season, Walker has leveled up. His main flaw a year ago, other than some turnovers, was struggling to finish at the rim. Synergy ranked Walker at the 11th-percentile in finishing, a rough number even for a small guard.
This year, though, he’s taking a step in a new direction. Walker’s pulled a serious feat of posting his best finishing percentage ever - 60% FG% at the rim as of production - while retaining the ability to draw contact down low. This is all while being the obvious #1 focus of every defensive gameplan, by the way. Here’s an example where Walker does a gorgeous job of splitting a pick-and-roll and lofting a layup over Jacksonville’s big in the paint.
I don’t like to overreact, obviously, but that’s an NBA-level play.
What might be scarier for opponents is that Walker’s doing this while sustaining a terrific hit rate from three. A year ago, Walker shot 40% from deep after shooting 35% across two years at Tulane. This year, through seven games against Division I opponents, Walker is hitting 41.7% of his three-point attempts, with the majority of the pull-up variety. Per Synergy, only four D-1 players have made more threes off the dribble, and among those who’ve attempted at least 35 pull-up threes, Walker’s 3PT% of 40.5% is second-highest in America. (Shoutout to Lamar Norman, Jr. of Western Michigan, who is at an absurd 51.2%.)
Translation: this hit rate allows Andy Kennedy to put Walker in various on- and off-ball screen sets, wind him up like a children’s toy, and let him go.
These improvements have allowed for Walker to merely elevate himself to the leading scorer in America, scoring 25.7 PPG. The last player to average 25+ points while posting 4 or more assists a game: Trae Young. That’s the type of singular, must-watch college talent we don’t get to see much anymore.
Dunkingham, Alabama
Well, hope you like seeing rims get absolutely decimated. UAB has dunked the ball a hilarious 47 (!) times in eight games, nearly six per game, which is the highest rate in D-1. This would be one thing if they had three Zach Edeys or whatever doing it, but UAB as a team ranks below the national average in height. Unsurprisingly, the team’s tallest player, 6’11” Trey Jemison, is responsible for the most on the team at 13. That’s fine.
But what about a 6’2” transfer from LSU, Eric Gaines, having nine dunks already this season?
Gaines’ leaping ability may be his best offensive attribute. He’s struggled to shoot everywhere else - 10-for-38 on everything that’s not at the rim - but once down low, he’s a giant threat and a problem. Per Torvik, only three other players in America (6’3” or shorter) have as many or more dunks as Gaines has. What makes Gaines one-of-one - literally - is his passing ability.
Utilizing Gaines as the main on-ball point guard has allowed Jelly Walker to play more off-ball and get better overall shot quality. Gaines uses his own driving ability to get other guys open, and while he’s yet to flash much shooting skill through 2.25 years of college ball, he’s still very much to be respected down low. So much respect, in fact, that on this play, Georgia commits their big to Gaines to keep him from getting to the rim…which allows the aforementioned Jemison to get one of his easiest dunks of the year.
If you like dunks, if you like threes, these are your guys. But there’s somehow still more to uncover.
Hard in the paint
Unlike the NBA, college hoops doesn’t offer true points in the paint stats, so some of what you see here is more contextual than black-and-white. But: these guys are dadgummed monsters. UAB is scoring a truly bonkers 49.8 points per game at the rim; that’s #2 in America only behind Southern Utah. They’ve scored 50+ at the rim in four different games (counting free throws/fouls), and the only team to hold them below 45 this season is Jacksonville…who still gave up 37.
UAB’s been able to push the ball in transition for reasons we’ll discuss shortly, but in half-court, they’ve been demolishing opponents via an array of post-ups and basket cuts. The Blazers aren’t exactly Purdue in the post, but their utilization of Trey Jemison in the post is pretty fascinating. Jemison is Trevion Williams-like at 6’11”, 260 with a body type of “freight train”; his backup, Javian Davis, is merely 6’9”, 265, with a body type of “please move.”
Kennedy is committed to getting them a healthy amount of paint touches in each game. Neither is a real shooter, though Jemison is a little more diverse in what he brings offensively. Here’s a set where Jemison first sets a screen on the perimeter, then rolls around another screen inside where he sets a post pin action for an easy two. (Great pass by Gaines, by the way.)
With Davis in the game, his verticality isn’t quite as strong as Jemison’s, but the sheer amount of width he brings - literally - can be hard to stop for a lot of teams. Toledo is an offense-first team that struggles with physicality; UAB gets Davis in a post-up situation against J.T. Shumate, who’s only two inches shorter but is 55 pounds lighter. A fairly easy win for Davis occurs.
Beyond the post, there are the litany of off-ball cuts in Kennedy’s offense. UAB’s scoring more points off of basket/flash/screen cuts than all but 16 teams in America, which, given their excellence in most other play types, is fairly remarkable. The Blazers run an average amount of on-ball screens, but it’s not their first nor their most efficient choice.
Instead, there’s all the off-ball screens and cuts. UAB ranks in the 96th percentile in off-ball screen usage and in the 86th percentile in usage of cuts. (If you’re a Tennessee fan, your ears may have perked up.) For Kennedy, you’re either moving or you’re not playing. All that movement leads to open buckets. Here, KJ Buffen (Ole Miss transfer) leaks into the open space provided by South Alabama’s defense for an easy two after Jelly Walker creates paint pressure with his drive.
With all of this in mind, it’s not a huge shock that this is Shot Quality’s favorite offense. They get great shots more often than not, they play fast, they play fun, they play hard. I find a lot of things to be very lovable about this offense.
No press release
There is the other half of the ball, of course. UAB’s defense doesn’t get the same amount of love the offense does, and to be fair, the offense is the superior unit. However, it’s not as wide of a gap as it was last year. Kennedy’s 2021-22 UAB defense ranked 99th nationally; this one has jumped 30 spots to 69th. Only two teams have posted 1+ PPP on them, and no one has bested Toledo’s 1.086 PPP (heavily driven by free throws) quite yet.
The best aspect of this defense, at least for now, is a full-court press that forces more turnovers than all but four of the 35 teams with 150+ possessions in a press this year, per Synergy. UAB’s man-to-man trapping press has proven really difficult for teams to break, as Toledo found out in their battle with the Blazers to close that game out:
I’d estimate that UAB runs this press after about two-thirds of made baskets. It’s mostly on them to get in position in time, but when they do, good things happen. Even when teams do break the press, they have to deal with a UAB half-court defense that’s forcing a good amount of turnovers even when the game is slowed down.
They’ve used these steals to fuel their transition offense, which has made everything that much more deadly. Per Hoop-Math, only 11 teams get more transition attempts per game off of steals than UAB does.
If anything, though, UAB’s aggression could land them in rotational hot water down the road. Adjusted for opponent, UAB’s defensive FT rate ranks 258th nationally, and while the turnovers make this worth it, a big part of their only loss on the season was that four members of their eight-man rotation committed four fouls. (Jemison fouled out and only played 17 minutes.) UAB posted 11 steals, but any sort of hyper-aggressive system like this will have its weaknesses. Still, when this is the flaw that I’m having to point out - that your team stuffed with college kids fouls a lot - I think it could be worse. Also, it makes you more watchable, so.
Funneled into no man’s land
As fun and fascinating as UAB’s press is, they might be even more intriguing in half-court. UAB is super-efficient as a man-to-man unit, but 10-15 possessions a game, Kennedy will toss out a double-teaming, trapping zone that basically either gives up a shot or forces a turnover. There’s very few things quite like watching it.
Even when it doesn’t work (they gave up a missed open three later on), you can admit that possession is pretty interesting. So is the fact that, despite their lack of obvious size, UAB forces more runners and floaters than 99% of all other college teams. UAB’s done a tremendous job of eliminating dribble handoffs with their defensive system, and teams aren’t exactly willing to post up on Trey Jemison. What ends up happening is that opponents either end up having to ISO late in the clock or they work their way into ill-fated ball-screen possessions.
This UAB team, thanks to players like Gaines specifically, ranks in the 92nd percentile at defending ball screens. They don’t give up many easy looks at the rim, and they’re right at the national average in allowing catch-and-shoot threes. Could they stand to force more pull-up twos? Probably. Do I get a huge kick out of watching guards get trapped in no man’s land, then being forced to toss up a floater that has about a 30% shot of somehow going in? Oh yeah.
These guys play KenPom’s #25 team tomorrow at 6 PM on ESPN+. There are certainly other things you could be doing, as it is the first Saturday without a lot of football in months, but I think your time could be spent in far worse ways. Opponent West Virginia is watchable in its own right: they force a billion turnovers, foul a lot, and have recently learned how to shoot a basketball.
I like West Virginia. I find them very entertaining when they have the athletes to play Bob Huggins’ brand of basketball. And yet: I will admit that I’ll be rooting for UAB. I try to not take sides on this website ever, because it’s bad for my writing, but this is a spot where I can’t help it.
Conference USA is in a strangely good spot right now. UAB is in the top 40 - CUSA’s first top 40 team since Memphis left the league - but Florida Atlantic is 48th and North Texas is 67th. This is legitimately on pace to be a two-bid league for the first time since 2012. It’s long overdue. Per Torvik, CUSA teams are 5-53 against metrics top 25 teams since the start of the 2018-19 season. UAB’s last win against a top 25 metrics team happens to be the last time many people remember them winning a big game: March 19, 2015, in their 14 vs. 3 upset of Iowa State.
This is a giant opportunity for a team I like with a coach I like (and frankly deeply miss on SEC Network broadcasts) in a conference I’m growing to really like. If you’re as into this as I am, I look forward to watching this one virtually with you all tomorrow evening.
Holy cow, this is a very good an in-depth look at a team with which I was unfamiliar