Xavier’s super sophomore has been turning up the production in January, but he’s not even approaching his ceiling.
If you watched Xavier take on UConn over the weekend, you could be forgiven for thinking Dailyn Swain was at his basketball zenith. He announced before the first media timeout that he was picking up where he left off against St. John’s, powering through Hassan Diarra to score and convert a three-point play. He then went to work on UConn wing Jaylin Stewart, demolishing him so thoroughly that he became unplayable.
Coming into the game, Stewart had been starting and averaging 30 minutes per game in his last four. Against Xavier and Dailyn Swain, he got just 13 minutes. It wasn’t an issue of foul trouble or injury, either. It was just Dailyn Swain devouring his lunch so thoroughly that Dan Hurley showed him the mercy of not running him back out there.
In a game that was half track meet, half bear fight, Swain cobbled together a casual 15/3/4 on 6-7/0-0/3-3 shooting. In fact, in the 4-1 spell that has added 1.5 WAB to Xavier’s resume and gotten their season back on track, Swain is averaging 11.4/5.0/2.8 on .622/.000/.846 shooting. In that context, maybe the most eye-catching number he has put up is 0-2 from deep. Against teams that not only know he’s not a threat from deep but also know he’s not even going to chuck one up and get lucky, he has gotten to his spots so relentlessly that he’s making almost two thirds of his attempts.
Lest you think it’s all unstoppable force on offense, please also consider that he’s Xavier’s best and most versatile defender. At 6’8”, 220, he still has the lateral mobility to stay in front of all but the most shifty of guards, and his athleticism and wing span are enough to erase most of his mistakes. His size puts him in the mix against just about any big man, and he’s quick enough to give them fits if they try to isolate on him.
Most importantly, he can be trusted in the biggest moments. Witness him getting not one but two vital deflections as the primary defender in the deciding final possession of Xavier’s win against Marquette. He then drew UConn’s leading scorer Solo Ball – who had a game-high 20 at that point – in the final possession Xavier’s last time out, isolating him in the corner and taking him out of the play so comprehensively that the action broke down and the Huskies didn’t even get a shot off.
So if he’s an unstoppable force on offense and a one-man wrecking crew on defense, why would I say he hasn’t even arrived yet? What else is there to do?
Obviously I hinted at it above. This year, Swain is 6-16 (37.5%) from mid-range and 3-11 (27.3%) from deep. Push that out to include his freshman year and Swain is 100-160 (62.5%) at and around the rim and 23-70 (32.9%) on everything else, including a dreadful 7-37 (18.9%) from beyond the arc. He has somehow been an efficient scoring wing at the D1 level despite having the kind of scoring range you’d associate with prime Shaq or a drunk uncle at a family reunion, just dominating elementary school nephews on a 9’ rim.
The reasons for hope are as obvious as the limitations. The first is Swain’s free throw shooting. In 50 games at Xavier, he’s shooting 87-105 (82.6%) from the line. That’s an insane number for a 6’8” forward in general, to say nothing of one as athletic and versatile as Swain. The mechanics of making the ball go through the hoop are clearly there.
The other is Swain’s age. In his recruiting, much was made of the fact that he was young for his grade, but I’m not sure how much it has gotten lost since. Born on July 15, 2005, he won’t turn 20 until this summer. At 19.5 years old, he’s almost an entire year younger than the average sophomore (according to Ken Pom dot com). UConn’s talismanic freshman Liam McNeeley – an entire grade behind – isn’t even three months younger than Swain.
There is so much projectability left in Swain’s game. If he can translate his shooting ability into even a modicum of reliability from range, there won’t be any obvious gaps left in his game.
I’m surely not the only or even the first to notice. There were over a dozen NBA scouts in the building on Saturday to watch Swain eat like he’d never been fed, functionally force an opponent and classmate into early retirement, and blow up a play specifically designed to win the game by the best coach in the whole sport.
How long we’ll see Swain at Xavier seems like it’s just a function of how quickly he hits the next step of his development at this point. However long he call Cintas home, we might look back at one stretch in January 2025 as the moment we saw the first flickers of the light bulb well and truly clicking on for him.