NCAAM teams
John Gasaway, ESPN Insider 10y

Nine players hurting their teams

Insider Men's College Basketball, Butler Bulldogs, Kentucky Wildcats, Georgia Bulldogs, Illinois Fighting Illini, South Carolina Gamecocks, Texas A&M Aggies, Colorado Buffaloes, Wake Forest Demon Deacons, Texas Longhorns

Contrary to popular belief, coaches can't control everything that happens on a basketball court. One thing they can dictate, however, is which players get the touches and launch the shots for their offense.

So anytime the question, "Why are you touching the basketball?" is posed to a player, I guess the answer will more or less always be: "Because my coach lets me." Fair enough. I'll point my curiosity toward the respective coaches. I want to know why the following players are getting so many touches and looks.

For our current purposes, I'm interested only in major-conference players who will return next season. In other words, questionable high-volume but low-efficiency producers such as Jahii Carson and Johnny O'Bryant are no longer my concern. Those guys declared for the draft and therefore have escaped my evaluative jurisdiction.

Now, why are these guys touching the basketball so much?

Andrew Harrison, Kentucky Wildcats

Assuming he declares for the draft -- no word there yet -- Harrison will present a fairly fascinating evaluative problem for NBA front offices. Can you really spend a first-round pick on one of just seven major-conference players who recorded 200 or more 2-point attempts yet failed to make 40 percent of those shots? We may be about to find out. Harrison, of course, has good size for a point guard, and he has shown beyond a doubt he can draw fouls. That plus potential may be enough to land him a spot in the first round, but the material point is that is all there is in terms of demonstrated performance to this point.

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