Utah State transfer portal player breakdown — Luke Kearney | Sports

Scouting Report

Kearney projects as a very solid off-ball scorer who can pull his weight in a number of other ways but won’t necessarily be elite in skills other than jump shooting. His best attribute in all honesty is that he has good size, at 6-foot-7 and 215 lbs, while also having solid speed. This makes him a player who can play and guard any position 2-4.

Being an off-ball scorer is something of an art that Kearney has already showed promise in. Playing off-ball isn’t just sitting in the corner, it’s reading the defense and finding the changing gaps to ensure you’re always ready for a pass where you can start a triple-threat (drive, pass or shoot). Kearney displays just that in the following clip (he’s wearing #3).

Kearney could have just drifted further into the backcourt and received the pass from his teammate who was facing two defenders. But Kearney attacked the opening created by the double-team. This didn’t create an open shot for him, but the defense had to collapse into the paint and Kearney found an easy pass for a wide-open 3-pointer.

In general, Kearney has a knack for sneaking around the court and finding ways to get the defense to just not notice him. On most plays, this just means a bunch of small cuts and subtle movement that won’t see the light of a highlight reel. But it pays off often enough that his team definitely benefits from it.

Where he starts falling short, though is his ability to fully capitalize on this off-ball movement. Kearney’s 3-point percentage thus far in his career is worrisome, sitting at 32.0 through two seasons. A positive in this is that he bumped his shooting percentage from 29.8 as a freshman to 32.7 as a sophomore. The negative is that it’s still just…average.

Kearney is not a bad shooter, there’s no reason to say anything to that effect. The reason this gets concerning is that Kearney’s best niche is as a shooter first and then expanding to other areas of scoring (which we’ll get to his capabilities in that regard in a bit). He attempted 159 threes last year, a volume that ranked him second on the Falcons would have ranked him second on the Aggies. But of the 495 players to attempt at least 150 threes last year, Kearney ranked 415th in 3-point percentage. If he’s going to be a high-volume shooter, he needs to up his efficiency to around 37 or 38 percent at least.

Luckily for Kearney, his career has all the hallmarks of being able to develop into a capable 3-point shooter. In high school, he shot in the high 30s and throughout his prep and collegiate career he’s maintained high free throw percentages. All of those signal an ability to be a high-level shooter. Kearney just has to put in the work, and Calhoun, his staff and their system will help with the rest.

Moving on from jump-shooting, what’s a bit surprising at times — given how much he’s used as an off-ball threat — is how good Kearney is with the ball in his hands in a pinch. These moments are pretty rare as the ball almost never sticks in his hands (which is an underrated positive aspect of his game). Give it enough time, though, and you’ll see him be more aggressive and attack the lane.

Kearney doesn’t have a large volume of on-ball scoring in his history, though it’s enough to see that there’s promise. He ranked 598th out of 4,148 players in efficiency on pick-and-roll scoring as the ball-handler. Not bad at all for a guy cast as an off-ball scorer. His efficiency on drives to the basket in general is also rather good, with Kearney shooting 55.6 percent and drawing a decent number of fouls on those plays as well.

In a world in which Kearney gets a higher volume of on-ball scoring looks, one shot you’d expect to see quite a bit of is his floater. The clips of on-ball scoring from earlier not-so-coincidentally include three instances of Kearney hitting a driving floater. Last year, Kearney went 6-for-12 on these shots, which is a very high percentage on what is a pretty difficult type to master (for reference, Mason Falslev used a floater quite a bit last year and shot 42.1 percent). Having the ability to be efficient on a generally low-efficiency shot is an incredibly valuable thing to have as part of one’s arsenal, especially relatively early in one’s career.

Defensively, Kearney has some of the tools to be a solid defender. His 6-foot-7 frame helps him out quite a bit and he has enough quickness to not just get blown by super easily on defense. And while Kearney wasn’t exactly a steals merchant at Air Force, he had his moments using that longer frame to disrupt passing lanes.

Where things fall apart a bit is in his consistency and ability to be a high-level defender. The latter of those two things isn’t a massive concern since most players don’t ever end up being elite defenders. Consistency, though, is a concern. On some drives, you’ll see him move his feet and keep up with even quick slashers such as Falslev.

Between plays like these, there are cases of miscommunications on switches, getting blown by on drives and having players bully him in the paint. How much of this can be ironed out by experience and by being in a new defensive scheme is hard to know. Kearney doesn’t appear to lack effort on defense. He keeps his head and hands up and moves his feet well enough to keep up with most. He just seems to lack an initial burst of quickness or quick reactions, to keep glued to his man.

Fit with Utah State

The Aggies added a lot of players with length this offseason, especially at the forward positions. Kearney is one, with Kingston Tosi, Adlan Elamin and Brayden Boe all bringing length to the wings. The latter three of those players are freshmen, though. Kearney has two seasons under his belt and should have a better chance of getting into the rotation. To ensure that happens, though, he’s going to have to prove he can improve his efficiency, or at least be more efficient than the incoming freshmen.

It’s pretty easy to see a situation where Kearney ends up filling the same niche as Dexter Akanno and Tucker Anderson, players who spaced the floor and threaten defenses through finding holes rather than doing a ton of on-ball or ball-screen actions. A way in which Kearney could find an excellent niche is in Utah State’s high volume of 3-pointers that come via off-ball screens. The Aggies had the 11th-highest rate of these types of 3-pointers in the country, with Falslev, Akanno and Ian Martinez absolutely thriving on these types of shots.

Kearney, for all his minor shortcomings in deep shooting, has a career percentage of 38.1 specifically on 3-pointers in off-ball screen actions. A higher volume of these kinds of attempts could be a way for Kearney to up his efficiency by way of the right scheme, and a shot attempt he’s more comfortable with, along with any offseason improvement.

Defensively, Kearney can be used in a similar way that Anderson was. Neither have elite quickness, but in the matchup zone defense, Anderson had plenty of really good defensive moments where his length really bothered teams. Kearney may not be 6-foot-9, but he does have more bulk than Anderson and is still tall enough to cause a similar amount of chaos on the perimeter.