Trey Green should be taking a step forward this year, but he’ll have to fight through a lot of competition.
NIL is an exciting and at least halfway decent way to finally make sure that college basketball players get the money and recognition they have unquestionably earned. Combine that with the transfer portal and the young men and women playing the game today have more control than ever over where they will play and learn. That is almost unquestionably a good thing on the macro level.
On the micro level, though, players can be hurt by it. Trey Green spent last season watching Des Claude and Quincy Olivari dominate time as off the ball guards and Dayvion McKnight be the quietly excellent point guard. With only McKnight returning, Green must have thought he’d grow into a spot as a sophomore. Instead he watched Ryan Conwell, one of the most coveted transfers available, Dante Maddox, and Marcus Foster walk through the door.
That once again leaves a load of talent between Trey Green and a starting spot. He’s the likely point guard next year, but that comes with a ton of assumptions we can no longer make in today’s game. Let’s go with what we know now.
For starters, Green wants something to happen. He plays basketball like a kid playing 2k. It’s mash down the sprint button, try to steal everything, launch threes, and try the most awesome pass you can think of at the time. For Green so far this year it has worked. His turnover rate is down, his assist rate is way up, and he shot the ball well in the second game. His defense is enthusiastic, if not always effective. Green is listed at six feet tall, but so was Dee Davis. Sometimes “six footers” get scored on.
Green is absolutely electric though. He’s clearly in Sean Miller’s plans as a change of pace from the more composed and stately McKnight. (This not to mean McKnight is anything other than blistering fast, he just doesn’t play as if escaping a burning building.) What Green brings is a spark that can change games quickly. That can be good, such as when he torched Providence for 26 points on just 14 shots last year, or bad, like his team leading 28% usage rate against Purdue, when he shot the ball 12 times without apparently noticing it wasn’t going in often.
That really is the conundrum with Green. He needs a chance to light the spark that gets him going, but he can also get a little wild when trying to find it. If he’s getting 25 minutes a game, there’s plenty of time to live with his idiosyncrasies. In 10 minutes a game, everything he does seems heightened. Thus far this year he’s distributed the ball well without really get his shot going. You suspect some steadiness at the helm is what Coach Miller is looking for. The question is whether Trey will get the chance to show he can do it.