‘A can’t miss circus act.’ Get to know Kentucky’s best college basketball player.
Murray State sophomore Temetrius “Ja” Morant in the last couple of months went from a name mostly known by college basketball fans who are really in the know to one of the biggest names in the sport.
Whatever your level of expertise, fans in the Eastern Time Zone will get the chance to witness Morant’s talents in person when the Racers travel to Eastern Kentucky University on Saturday (7 p.m. tip) and Morehead State in a couple of weeks (7:35 p.m. Feb. 28). What should you know about the Murray State sensation before making the trip to see him?
1. Lottery love
No player’s draft profile has risen more this season than Morant, who was considered a possible first-round pick before the season.
Sports Illustrated’s first mock draft of the 2018-19 season projected Morant as the 16th overall pick, just outside of the NBA’s draft lottery. Its latest mock, released Tuesday, tabs Morant as the second-best selection in the entire draft, behind only Duke freshman Zion Williamson, and right ahead of Duke’s other star rookies, R.J. Barrett and Cam Reddish.
ESPN’s Jay Bilas and Seth Greenberg have both likened Morant — a 6-foot-3 high-flyer — to Russell Westbrook. Greenberg sees some De’Aaron Fox in the Racers guard, too, and is optimistic about Morant’s ability to improve the most oft-knocked part of his game —long-range shooting (he’s knocking down 32.7 percent of his three-point attempts for the Racers this season).
“He’s probably a more creative passer than both of those guys, and probably not as good of a finisher or scorer as Westbrook,” Greenberg told the Herald-Leader. “He’s gotta improve his shot, but I think it’s gonna be fine. It’s a little flat and he’s gotta be a little more consistent with his release point, but I think his shot’s gonna be fine. As long as a shot’s not broken, when you get guys and they go to the NBA, because that’s their job and they’re working out and that’s all they’re doing, they tend to improve significantly in terms of shooting.”
2. Murray’s latest star
Morant isn’t the first Murray State player to be a high draft selection. He’s not even the first Racer to go two-and-done.
Those distinctions went to Cameron Payne, who after two years at Murray State was selected 14th overall — the last pick in the lottery — by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2015 NBA Draft.
Isaiah Canaan, taken 34th overall by the Houston Rockets in the 2013 draft, played all four seasons at Murray State but is still in the NBA; he’s currently with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Morant, who’s 10th in the country at 23.9 points per game, will be Murray State’s 23rd NBA Draft selection and its fifth since 1990, joining Payne, Canaan, Marcus Brown (1996) and Popeye Jones, who played 11 years in the league — the most by any Murray State product — after being drafted 41st overall by the Rockets in 1992.
The newest Racer to join the NBA fraternity could be the one who best challenges Jones’ record.
“It’s a different level,” said Ed Marlowe, who has covered Murray State for The Paducah Sun since the 2015-16 season. “… He absolutely, every single game — even the games where he doesn’t play as well as you think he should play — every single game there is a single, solitary play that he makes, and you’re just like, ‘I can’t believe he did that.’”
Opposing teams’ arenas are now selling out to see Morant, an unranked recruit out of Sumter, S.C., who committed to Murray State despite a late offer from South Carolina, the only Power Five school to put a scholarship on the table. Bilas compared Morant’s ascension to that of Stephen Curry, who became a top-10 pick after his junior year at Davidson.
“People are identified early on when they show that kind of talent. People aren’t blind,” Bilas said. “If he had played this way and performed this way in high school, he would have been seen this way. The same thing with Stephen Curry. Stephen Curry wasn’t a highly recruited player coming out of high school because of his body makeup and the like. This is not an exact science.
“This kind of thing from time to time happens. It doesn’t happen very often, and it doesn’t mean, ‘Hey, go recruit guys that are unknown because they’re going to turn into Ja Morant and Stephen Curry.’ That’s not the way it works either. Players get better.”
3. More than a dunker
Let’s be clear — Morant can flat-out rock a rim. But it’s his vision and nose for the ball, paired with his hops, that have Morant in position to be the first point guard taken in the next NBA Draft.
In less than two years, Morant has racked up 436 assists at Murray State, 95 short of Don Mann’s career record at the school set from 1985-89. He set the school’s single-season record for dimes on Feb. 2 after dealing seven in a win over Tennessee Tech.
He leads the NCAA in assists this season — 10.2 per game — after finishing 15th overall as a freshman last season; Trae Young, the fifth overall pick in last year’s NBA Draft and a Rookie of the Year contender for the Atlanta Hawks, was the only first-year player who averaged more assists last year than Morant, who’s on pace to become the first NCAA Division I player to average 20 points and 10 assists since assists have been officially tracked (1983-84).
Greenberg’s taken to calling him “the Patrick Mahomes of basketball” because of his no-look ability and improvisation.
“He’s got transitional vision. He sees plays before they happen,” Greenberg said. “… I think with more open court in the NBA he’ll even be that more dangerous. I think with better players you’ll even see more creative passing. I think that he does a really good job at reading ball screens and he can take the ball off the bounce in one hand and make that play cause he reads all five defenders.”
Morant’s also a lively rebounder for his position — he’s averaging 5.4 boards a night, second-most on his team and among the top 50 at his position.
“He’s a circus act, man. He is a can’t miss circus act,’” Marlowe said. “I think his passing ability and his rebounding ability really separate him from what guys like Canaan and Payne could do. Canaan and Payne rebounded the ball because they were asked to. Morant rebounds the ball because he wants to.”
4. Better than Zion?
Morant has sniped some of Williamson’s spotlight, but the 6-7, 285-pound prospect is the consensus No. 1 overall pick for a reason — he’s a franchise-changing freak of nature.
But Morant should be able to make a big impact for whichever team ends up with his services. The 10th-leading scorer in the country will enter a league that currently thrives on star guard play: 14 of the NBA’s top 25 leading scorers are guards, including Portland teammates Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum, both former mid-major studs who are same height as Morant.
Both Lillard and McCollum are about 20 pounds heavier than Morant, who checks in at 175 pounds — or roughly 60 percent of a Zion Williamson. Westbrook, to whom he’s most frequently compared, is 25 pounds larger.
“People gotta stop getting caught up in the Zion comparisons,” Greenberg said. “(Morant’s) size and length are fine, now his strength is not where it needs to be. He’s gotta be stronger, and that’s gonna impact him some on the defensive end, getting through screens, not getting hung up on ball screens.”
5. March Mad-less?
Murray State won’t qualify for the NCAA Tournament unless it wins the Ohio Valley Conference’s tournament, something it has done 16 times and twice this decade (2012 and last season). That’s life in what will almost certainly be a one-bid league.
Three OVC teams were 10-2 in conference play heading into Thursday — Austin Peay, Belmont and Murray State. The Racers’ two losses in conference were to the Bruins and Jacksonville State, who’s alone in fourth place at 9-3.
The league’s strong at the top — Belmont has an NCAA NET ranking of 60 and the Racers aren’t far behind at 65 (both are ahead of several Power Five teams as well as Seton Hall, which defeated UK this season), and Austin Peay and Jacksonville State are inside the top 150. The rest of the conference leaves something to be desired; Eastern Kentucky is next-highest in NET at 250th overall.
“They’re gonna have to win the league to make the tournament, but they have a chance to win their automatic bid, and if they win the automatic bid there’s no reason they can’t be really competitive and win a game or two in the NCAA Tournament,” Bilas said of Murray State. “I don’t see much past that. It’s not happened out of that league in a long, long time, but it’s not to say that it can’t be done.”
Morant’s ascension — up draft boards and into headlines — in a way will have been more impressive if the Racers can’t repeat as OVC champs. He and Murray State didn’t have to bust a bracket in March on CBS to burst into the people’s consciousness; Morant made his name widely known by Christmas predominantly from the confines of ESPN+.
“The amount of publicity that the institution has gotten, the community’s gotten and the program’s gotten? You can’t afford to buy that type of publicity and exposure. It’s been phenomenal,” Greenberg said. “… The NCAA Tournament is a one-weekend hit. He’s become, in a lot of ways, the story of college basketball for months.”
Saturday
Murray State at Eastern Kentucky
6 p.m. (ESPN Plus)
This story was originally published February 14, 2019 at 11:06 AM.
