The best player in college basketball is Jalen Brunson. This is true today, when the Villanova Wildcats have no game scheduled. It was true on Thanksgiving, when he scored 25 points to help defeat a burgeoning Tennessee squad in the semifinals of the Battle 4 Atlantis. It was true last week even though he turned over the ball seven times in a loss to Providence and had to acknowledge “not being strong with the ball” on that night.
There are players who will dazzle you more when they walk into the gym. (Oh, my goodness, Deandre Ayton).
There are players who will score more points and grab more rebounds. (Here’s to you, Marvin Bagley).
There are players who will more frequently create magic moments with the basketball. (Is Trae Young the best passer college has seen in 10, 20 or 30 years?)
There are several worthy candidates for first-team All-America running around, and let us remember what an incredible honor that is, to be considered one of the five best of more than 4,500 Division I players. There is no more better player than Brunson, though: no one as complete, with as profound an effect on winning basketball games. He has been this player throughout the season, as we all became infatuated by the glamor and pizzazz of young Mr. Young.
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To use an analogy that will make no one comfortable, he is like Chris O’Dowd’s charming, appealing state patrol character in “Bridesmaids,” the person Kristin Wiig really ought to be noticing when she’s instead hooking up with dapper Jon Hamm.
Brunson has scored in double figures in every game this season. He is averaging 19.5 points and 4.9 assists. Although he is a 6-3 point guard, Brunson ranks 69th among Division I players in field goal percentage – ahead of such excellent big men as Ethan Happ of Wisconsin, Moritz Wagner of Michigan and Chimezie Metu of Southern California – and ahead of every single major-conference guard his size.
“You peel his face off, he’d probably have wires coming out of it,” Xavier coach Chris Mack told the Philadelphia Inquirer after the first of the Muskeeters’ two losses to Villanova, implying Brunson is a robot.
Oh, no, he’s much too perfect for that.
It’s curious that when considering teams for the NCAA Tournament, many push the concept of the “eye test” when it really should be all about the numbers, but some of those same people are eager to dwell purely on statistics when judging player performance that so obviously is meant to be appreciated by watching.
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But OK. If you want to put Young’s Division I-leading 28.3 points and 9.2 assists per game on the board and stop, we can counter by, indeed, making it about numbers. Let’s employ the newish statistic offensive rating, an advanced metric that combines points, rebounds, assists and offensive rebounds to determine how many points a player generates for his team. Among those who average at least 15 points, Brunson has a 132.5 rating that leads all players. In fact, over the past 10 years, only three players as involved in their team’s offenses as Brunson beat that number.
Brunson is shooting 53.7 percent from the field. There were 14 point guards chosen as first-team All-Americans over the previous decade. Only UCLA’s Lonzo Ball topped that figure.
So there are numbers to demonstrate Brunson’s individual achievements are nearly as uncommon as Young’s. You just need to look harder.
Brunson has the advantage of playing with better players than Young, and being a part of a more successful team, but anyone who followed Brunson’s performance this season surely noticed he has the capacity to score big when the Wildcats need it and the humility to step back and let others handle that when they can manage.
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When Villanova visited Butler in late December and fell into a 20-point deficit because of the Bulldogs’ cartoonish 3-point shooting, Brunson delivered 31 points to help keep it that close – no kidding – but also to bring the Wildcats back and make it a two-possession game with a couple minutes left. When Nova blew out Gonzaga, he was content with 12 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists.
He does whatever is necessary for his team to have the best chance to win. Quite often no more, almost never no less.
This is not just about Young's decline, although his struggles -- and his team's struggles -- throughout February have allowed us to see more clearly what Brunson means to his team and to the game of college basketball.
A while before Young’s decline became a contagion, when he’d just started to show few signs his freshman year would not be transacted entirely on a cloud, a coach in the Big East lobbied me to support Brunson for player of the year because he saw on a regular basis the breadth of Brunson’s excellence.
He was right then. He is right now. To the question of, “Who is the best player in college basketball?” Jalen Brunson has been the correct answer since the season began Nov. 10. It just took us all awhile to see he was Mr. Right.
