Summer basketball preview: Briscoe back for Round Two
Isaiah Briscoe is entering his second season with Kentucky's basketball program, and this offseason doesn't seem too different than the last one.
At least according to the way people are talking about Briscoe and their expectations for him.
First year marked by ups, downs
Before last year Briscoe was heralded as a top point guard in his class, a big body and a big talker in the back court. He was to be, as he ultimately was, one of three guards in a starting lineup that would be dominated by the players on the perimeter. Although John Calipari and others spoke of the Cats having three point guards, for all practical purposes Tyler Ulis was the Cats' point man, Jamal Murray the shooting guard and Isaiah Briscoe the powerful third.
Expectations were high for Briscoe, and why not?
Five-star point guard. Confident swagger. Calipari's track record. A couple of big-time back court buddies. What's not to like?
Briscoe's freshman season wasn't a big disappointment, in hindsight and looking at the whole body of work. He wasn't ranked as one of the very best five-star players in the country, although he was a five-star player nonetheless.
He played 32.2 minutes per game on a team that reached the Round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament. In other words, whatever Briscoe's shortcomings, John Calipari didn't feel like he had alternatives. Some of that was probably indeed a statement on the relative weakness of Kentucky's supporting cast, when compared to some other Calipari teams, but Briscoe also deserves credit for all he did well.
He averaged 9.6 points and, more impressively, 5.3 boards per game. That rebounding was a crucial aid for a Kentucky team whose front court was almost entirely non-existent in some games.
Briscoe also dished out 3.1 assists per contests.
Perhaps what he was best at was taking the ball off the dribble from the wing and slicing through the interior defense of the opponent, smoothly navigating from three-point line to charity stripe, down to the baseline and back again. That kind of ball-handling, body control and overall slashing ability freed things up for himself and others at the rim.
Then again, it'd be a stretch to say that Briscoe's freshman season went as well as most people thought it would. Briscoe's shooting woes were the single-biggest story of his freshman season, at least as far his individual game was concerned. It was one of the biggest stories of the year for the Wildcats.
The woes weren't just limited to one part of the floor. True, Briscoe finished well enough near the rim, as expected. But from the charity stripe, from behind the three-point line and from everywhere in between, he struggled. Big-time.
Briscoe shot 43.9-percent from the field, which is just fine for a freshman guard. His .135 from three and his .460 from the free throw line? Not quite as acceptable.
Calipari never drew a firm red line in the sand forbidding Briscoe from taking jump shots.
Here's a silver lining, especially since Briscoe is returning for his second year: He started to hit more of those jumpers later in the year. He was 16-of-27 from the floor overall in his last four games of the year, the most important games of the season.
Furthermore, Briscoe was a perfect 6-of-6 from the foul line in the NCAA Tournament, and he also had a 4-of-5 free throw showing against Georgia and was 5-of-6 against Florida, both in late season games.
Briscoe attempted all of a single three-point shot in his last seven games as a Kentucky freshman.
While Briscoe's shooting garnered almost all the talk during the 2015-16 season, his stats in other categories were often quite good. He grabbed a dozen rebounds in the first game he played last year, snatched down 10 boards against Tennessee in Lexington, and had 11 against Stony Brook in the Big Dance.
Some of Briscoe's rebounding numbers could be attributed to the fact that UK often went small, or at least with three guards, and so there were going to be rebounds to be had by the back court. Some of it was due to the fact that UK's front court often left plenty of rebounding opportunities open for others. But, again, credit Briscoe with having good rebounding instincts, for having the body and motor to get to the ball, and for attacking the glass with regularity.
As for his passing, Briscoe wasn't asked to be Ulis, but he did show at various points during the year that he's a very capable distributor. His three dimes per game probably don't do his passing justice. Early in the season he had seven-assist games against USF and Ohio State. He had six assists in a game against Alabama in the SEC Tournament, and six more in the SEC Tournament Championship Game against Texas A&M.
Early last year Calipari challenged Briscoe to become the best perimeter defensive player in the country. He said he wanted to see it because he believed it was possible.
Sometimes Briscoe was better on defense than he was in other games, but on the whole he was a reliable defender and one who showed the potential to be spectacular on that end of the court. He's generally quick enough to stay with most of the smaller players he guards, he's strong enough to bother those players, and he's both big and strong enough to guard bigger players, while still giving the Cats a third guard in the game.
In hindsight, perhaps as big a surprise as Briscoe's shooting struggles was his personality transformation, going from the trash-talking Northeastern city kid who wouldn't back down from anyone and loved to jaw from start to finish, to a relatively mellow but upbeat personality that simply meshed well and without drama in the Kentucky locker room and on the court.
How will Briscoe play, and how should he be judged?
There are two big questions about Briscoe's upcoming 2016-17 season, at least from one media person's eye.
First, will the shooting improve? And if so, will it improve substantially, moderately, or marginally?
If his shooting improves markedly then he could well have a good NBA forecast after the '16-17 year. While some Kentucky fans would love to see Briscoe (or any five-star Calipari recruit, really) stick around for three- or four-years, that's probably the best case scenario, because Briscoe becoming the Briscoe high school scouts expected, at least in terms of his ability to shoot, would mean a dramatically improved forecast for the Cats' team as a whole.
If Briscoe's shooting improves moderately then that could still have a huge impact on this Cats' team. Perhaps the greatest impact and net benefit would be that opponents would have to respect Briscoe's shot. That would be scary for opponents, because Briscoe's production from last year is even more impressive - and this should be considered - from a player who did not have to be respected from outside, and who opponents were not reluctant to put at the free throw line.
But if Briscoe's shot improves only marginally and the same narrative emerges, with only the last few defenders of his old shot finally giving way to an ugly reality, then what impact would it have on his season and Kentucky's?
The Cats could still have a path to the Final Four even with a Briscoe that we saw last year. It'd be easier if he improves his shot, but it's not essential. But as far as Briscoe's own production, one might wonder how much he could realistically improve from freshman to sophomore year unless that improvement is largely driven by a better shot. The more opponents learn his tendencies, gain experience defending him, and the more he plays basketball frustrated by an ice cold touch, the more damaging it could be long term.
What's Briscoe's role on this team? That'll be determined in time. His role on last year's team was the subject of much speculation about a three-guard lineup before the '15-16 season, but it took many games and lots of trial and error before Ulis, Murray and Briscoe found their stride.
One thing he's got to improve, at times, is his shot selection. That will largely be related to how well he improves his jumper. Shots that were bad shots last year might be good shots this year, if he simply improves the clip at which he hits them.
Briscoe was very good on defense for much of last season, but he can still continue to improve. He's going to be asked to do many things on that end of the court, from helping to train his younger counterparts, to being more vocal shouting out what's happening and even with regard to defending a wider variety of player. Kentucky did go small quite often last year, and the three-guard lineup won't be new. But their three-guard lineup this year could be even smaller if Derek Willis is playing the four-spot. That would conversely cause Briscoe to often draw the responsibility of guarding bigger players.
The sophomore guard will be valuable with his penetration this year. Fox and Monk can do plenty of that, but if Briscoe can swerve through the lane as easily this year as he did last, Fox and Monk - two freshmen who need to shoot well, and who could use open shots for confidence - would really benefit.
The first question that looms large above Briscoe, as mentioned before, is the shooting.
The second question is about how he ought to be judged. Is it fair to judge him only in terms of his improvement as a shooter? Maybe not in some respects, but in others, it probably is. If Briscoe can improve his shot even a decent amount, shooting perhaps 60-percent from the free throw line and even .300 from three, that would still mean he's a liability at times in that respect. But he would rarely be a crippling liability. And such a seemingly attainable improvement would also make it that much harder for defenses to guard a player who did quite well considering he was dared to take wide-open jump shots with a lane packed in.
It's common knowledge by now that John Calipari's best Kentucky teams, and really the best teams everywhere under every coach, have experienced players. Not just experienced players, but experienced talented players, whose experience is the right kind. Briscoe has had humbling experience, perhaps some humiliating experience and he's learned a lot about his strengths, weaknesses and limitations. He knows he can be a quality starter on the biggest stage in college basketball, even when one major part of his basketball game tanked worse than anyone could have imagined. And he also knows that in spite of that nightmare, in one respect, he's still lived to call himself a starter at Kentucky for yet another year. And he's still young enough not to feel awkward about it.