Predicting the rotation, per-game stats for Utah State basketball | Sports

Probably the only safe bets for starting jobs are Mason Falslev and Garry Clark. They both have recent history as team-leading players and have necessary skills that the rest of the players may not be able to replicate. Falslev will provide volume scoring while Clark will be the team’s top post scorer and rebounder (Templin may contend for the latter title). Unless there’s a serious surprise, and I’m talking more about Clark, there’s not much of a chance someone else supplants either for dominance in the rotation.

The next most-safe spot is MJ Collins. His athleticism and defensive capabilities make him a very hard man to pass up for a key spot in the rotation and closing lineups. The hesitation to say he’s a lock in the same way as Clark and Falslev comes from there being a chance that Tucker Anderson shows serious improvement along with the ability to play that small forward role. There’s also a bevy of young wings behind Collins that could end up being surprises and end up supplanting the veteran. Luke Kearney is the most notable but incoming freshman Kingston Tosi and Braden Boe will be in consideration as well. Right now, my projections have all three of Kearney, Tosi and Boe outside the core rotation, but it’s one thing to keep an eye on in terms of where I could be wrong.

Point guard and the second bigman spot are quite up for grabs. Drake Allen will, much like last year, battle with a veteran, Kolby King, for the right to be starting point guard. And I’m expecting him to win that battle just as he did last offseason. But in the end, I’d expect Allen and King to split the point guard minutes almost down the middle as both will play very important roles as creators on offense. King is just going to be too critical with the skillset he provides. He’ll add more shooting, more rebounding and potentially a more dynamic scorer than Allen can be, so it’s hard to say Allen could dominate the point guard minutes.

Karson Templin is currently my pick to be the starting center. He was having an excellent season, but nagging injuries sapped some of his productiveness late in the season. Templin went from averaging essential 10 points, six rebounds and a block per game on 61.7 percent shooting (and north of 40 percent from three) in the first 16 games of the season to averaging five points and four rebounds on a mere 42.4 percent shooting the rest of the way. A healthier Templin, with another offseason to make further improvements to his game, should be very capable of taking up the role of starting center full-time.

The primary challenger to Templin as the starting center will be Zach Keller. At 6-foot-10, he has length that no one else on the roster can provide, and his shooting touch could create some frankly unfair offensive lineups for the Aggies. Either way, I’d expect to see a lot of Keller, even if he doesn’t start. We could see another dynamic like the one Aubin Gateretse and Templin had last year, where they split the vast majority of center minutes between them, and relatively equally.

I’m expecting a minimum rotation of eight players that should see time in every game in which they are healthy. Those eight athletes being Falslev, Clark, Collins, Templin, Allen, King, Keller and Anderson. That’s not to say the rotation will be only eight guys on a nightly basis as head coach Jerrod Calhoun has shown plenty of willingness to go deeper into his bench. Last year there were 10 Aggies that played at least 30 games and a couple of Calhoun’s Youngstown State teams went 9-10 players deep in terms of seeing at least fairly consistent court time. But when games are tight and the stakes are high, those eight players are probably going to be the ones relied upon.

Putting everything together, this is my predicted depth chart, limited to just the eight players I noted. As a quick formatting guide, player names in italics means that’s not their primary position, but being put there on the depth chart means I expect them to play that position in some lineups depending on other personnel on the floor.

• (PG) – Drake Allen / Kolby King
• (SG) – Mason Falslev / MJ Collins / Kolby King
• (SF) – MJ Collins / Tucker Anderson / Mason Falslev
• (PF) – Garry Clark / Zach Keller / Tucker Anderson
• (C) – Karson Templin / Zach Keller

Predicted Per-Game Stats

The following are my predictions for the per-game stats for every player on Utah State, reflecting rotation predictions above and trying to guess the production level of each individual on the roster.

Trying to predict stats for players is asking to look dumb in a year, but this is more about getting an idea for expectations for each player for the upcoming seasons than trying to look like a prophet. The methodology is mainly behind these is to examine each player’s career and try to extrapolate what their production might be given expected role and potential improvements (or even a regression to the mean in some cases). The one area where I just had to go out on a limb was in predicting redshirts. The four players I predicted that for are mostly educated guesses based on my evaluation of them and the rest of the roster as I doubt even the coaching staff is totally sure who will be redshirting.

These projections reflect my expectation of an eight-man core with three players that can balloon that rotation up to 11 players in any given game. Somewhat intentionally, those three fringe rotation players represent each position group with one point guard (Jordy Barnes), one wing (Kingston Tosi) and a big (David Iweze). I have Iweze and Barnes playing in most games, but expecting a few DNPs throughout the year, with Tosi having a few more games where he doesn’t play because of a potential lack of minutes at his position. Any more time than my predictions already call for and you’d have to start making some uncomfortable minutes cuts to the veteran players. It could end up being a good problem to have, but I’m going to fall short of predicting that.

Now, let’s start looking at some specific expectations reflected in these stat predictions.

First and foremost is that Falslev should make another jump, much like he did between his freshman and sophomore seasons. Nailing down how much of a jump he’ll make is a dangerous proposition. On the one hand, he should definitely be seeing a bump in production. Ian Martinez’s departure puts even more of the scoring load for Utah State’s offense on Falslev’s shoulders, and he should be well up for the task. But there’s also a bit of a diminishing return on how much of a jump that could be. And we could also see someone like Garry Clark or MJ Collins take on a major scoring load that limits top-end scoring for Falslev. He could also just not end up making the improvements necessary to become an elite scorer.

My initial projections had Falslev in the 16 PPG range, but on reflection I adjusted it after noticing that previous attempts at these same predictions have often sorely underestimated jumps in points per game for Utah State’s star players. Two notable examples being Steven Ashworth in 2022-23 and Great Osobor in 2023-24, even though I was very high on Osobor’s potential and expected him to be the team’s leading scorer (I predicted Osobor to land in the 14 PPG range and Ashworth around nine PPG). And, looking at historical examples, we can see how Falslev could very much follow in the footsteps of previous star guards at USU.

Ashworth made his big jump from sophomore to junior, making a whopping jump of nearly nine points per game between those two seasons (8.7 to 16.2), but he’s far from alone in having a notable jump at that point in his career. Jaycee Carroll went from 16.3 points per game as a sophomore to 21.3 as a junior and Sam Merrill did much of the same, jumping from 16.3 to 20.9 and winning Mountain West Player of the Year. These latter two examples are quite the rarified air for Falslev to join, but these are the expectations he’s getting based on what he’s done so far with his young career.

Two areas to keep a close eye on are Falslev’s 3-point and free throw percentages. My prediction has Falslev regressing to the mean from his 39.0 percent last year, but still maintaining most of the improvements he made after shooting just 30.3 as a freshman. I’m far less optimistic about his free throw percentage which I have sticking in the 60s. His career percentage in college is 60.3 percent and there’s not much evidence he’s going to see significant improvements. There was a strong hint Falslev’s 3-point percentage would rise from his low freshman rate as he made 40.5 percent on high volume in his four-year prep career. There is no such hint to be found in Falslev’s high school free throw shooting as he made only 71.0 percent on free throws in high school, 63.6 percent as a junior and senior when he was at his highest volume. It’s not out of the realm of possibility for him to improve, but all the evidence we have thus far leads to pessimistic projections.

Let’s not get too far into the weeds on Falslev and look at other players, starting with Garry Clark. I’ve already tipped my hand earlier in what I expect in that Clark should 1) be the second-leading scorer on the Aggies and 2) be the leading rebounder of the team. Exact totals could end up varying by quite a bit, from nine points and six rebounds on the low end to around 15 points, nine rebounds on the high end (the two stat categories not necessarily tied to each other in whether they hit the high or low end). If Falslev ends up as a 20 PPG scorer, that could sap some of the scoring from Clark though I’d still expect him produce well in points and boards. The presence of solid scoring from Falslev and a good rebounding frontcourt partner in Templin will likely keep Clark from hitting the his high end projections of being a double-double machine.

There are a few players I expect to stay at a similar level of production, with variations really only coming from a slight increase/decrease in minutes and good old fashioned random variation. Anderson, Allen and Templin fall into this category. Templin should produce more points and rebounds with a small expected jump in minutes and Allen could see a similar bump or decline based on how many minutes King ends up getting at point guard. For Anderson, my main prediction is that his 3-point percentage will rise back closer to what he pulled off as a freshman. Going from 38.1 percent with Central Arkansas to 29.5 percent on threes is a baffling drop and Anderson should recover from it.

Collins and King are two players that are probably the trickiest to predict. King is interesting because he averaged double figures at the mid-major level (10.4 at Tulane) but averaged less than six points in the Big East. Ultimately, I think King’s role and lower ceiling for expected minutes are going to keep him from being a double figure scorer. He’s likely going to split minutes with Allen and that’s going to hold him back and King’s numbers will probably be rather similar to Deyton Albury.

Looking at Collins, though, he’s a player that could end up being a bigger surprise.

Unlike with King, Collins has no direct frame of reference for what he may look like when playing at the mid-major level. Could he have a jump similar to what Martinez had when he went from Maryland to Utah State? I think there’s enough evidence to show that Collins probably isn’t going to be an All-MW level scorer (Martinez shot 35 percent from three before coming to USU while Collins has yet to crack 30 percent in any of his three seasons) but a jump in efficiency is certainly possible. We could end up seeing Collins have a similar jump to Dexter Akanno, who went from having a career 3-point percentage of 28.8 to making 42.4 percent from deep in his one year at Utah State. If he has this kind of jump in efficiency, there’s room for Collins to be a double-figure scorer and a great backcourt scoring partner for Falslev.