Tag: Neil Watson

Assist Tracker: Dec. 29

Keegan Bell (G, Chattanooga) — Bell got to play against Longwood last night and he took advantage of the situation going off for 16 assists, 10 points and nine rebounds in the 85-50 win. Eight of Bell’s assists were for threes and the Mocs only made nine. He also assisted on five layups and three dunks. The player distribution was pretty even five of Omar Wattad’s six baskets came off assists from Bell. Wattad was Chattanooga’s leading scorer with 18 points.

Matthew Dellavedova (G, St. Mary’s) — The west coast Gaels welcomed BYU into the WCC with a convincing 98-82 win in which Delledova played magnificently. He had 18 points, 12 assists and six rebounds in the win. Stephen Holt, who scored 21 points, was the greatest beneficiary on the night. He got four assists from Dellavedova. Half of Dellavedova’s assists went for layups as St. Mary’s just dissected the Cougars’ defense.

Neil Watson (G, Southern Miss) — Southern Miss is 12-2 after trouncing Alcorn State 80-49 last night. In that game Watson had 10 assists off the bench. None of those 10 assists were on a shot near the basket. He recorded assists on four threes and six jumpers. You don’t see that very often. Credit his teammates Jonathan Mills (19 points, 7-13), Darnell Dodson (16 points, 6-12) and LaShay Page (10 points, 3-11 — all makes off Watson assists) for knocking down the shots.

Scott Machado (G, Iona) — Yes, Machado ended up with 10 assists last night, but he also had five first half turnovers and really struggled with foul trouble. Half of those assists went to Mike Glover. Those five resulted in two dunks, two layups and a jumper. Momo Jones got three of the others. Three of Machado’s 10 assists were on jumpers as Hofstra’s defense forced him to pass out instead of in for most of the game.

Dwan McMillan (G, Hofstra) — Part of the reason for that was the pesky play of McMillan. He had nine assists in the game. Just one of the eight assists were for a basket around the rim (a layup by Mike Moore). There were five jumpers and three threes in the mix as well. Moore (24 points) and Nathaniel Lester (21 points) each knocked down three shots off passes from McMillan.

Kendall Marshall (G, North Carolina) — Marshall had eight points – on a perfect shooting night – and eight assists in 22 minutes as North Carolina rocked Elon 100-62. His eight assists included three dunks, two layups, two threes and a jumper. John Henson got two of the dunks. Harrison Barnes had the third.

Trey Burke (G, Michigan) — Freshman Burke had 13 points and seven assists – though the play-by-play says eight – and held Tim Frazier to four assist and five turnovers in Michigan’s 71-53 win over Penn State. (Note: Frazier did have 20 points.) Playing in John Beilein’s offense it’s not surprise that five of Burke’s assists in the play-by-play went for threes.

Kenneth Ortiz (G, Wagner) — The Seahawks have eight wins over non-conference opponents, the most in school history after a 72-61 victory over Air Force. It was Wagner’s most efficient offensive game of the season and Ortiz had 10 points and seven assists. Unfortunately there’s no play-by-play on ESPN for the game, so I can’t break them down. But I thought his performance should be noted here.

Assist Tracker: Dec. 17

You might know that I’ve been fascinated with assists this season and have been working on tools to make capturing and analyzing them even better. Well, I thought to help promote that I’d do a daily assist tracker. My goal here is to take a quick look at all the players in the country that had more than 10 assists on the night and then maybe highlight a few others on light days. I’ll look at who they’re passing too, what the resulting baskets are and any other interesting trends we might be able to pull out of the data. Most of these I posted on Twitter before coming up with this idea.

Kendall Marshall (G, North Carolina) – Four more “jumper” assists for Marshall today against Appalachian State out of 13. Five assists went to Tyler Zeller, leading to 10 of his 31 points. Marshall also sets John Henson up for a lot of dunks.

Lorenzo Brown (G, N.C. State) – Six of Brown’s 13 assists against Syracuse went to C.J. Williams. Three of his assists came in a four-possession span in the first half as the Wolfpack took an early 12-4 lead.

Neil Watson (G, Southern Miss) – He was just one of two players off the bench for the Golden Eagles in their 86-82 victory over Ole Miss. Only 10 of his 13 assists are available in the ESPN play-by-play, but five of those came on jumpers.

Michael Bizoukas (G, Missouri State) – The former DePaul guard is playing well with the Bears and had 11 assists against Kennesaw State in a 78-55 victory. Four of his 11 assists went to Kyle Weems. Christian Kirk was the only other player to receive more than one, he got two. Of Bizoukas’ assists nine were either threes (5) or jumpers (4).

Junior Cadougan (G, Marquette) – I know that someone liked the fact that Todd Mayo was inserted into the starting lineup. Five of Cadougan’s nine assists went to the freshman, including three threes and 13 points in total. Cadougan’s typical favorite target, Jae Crowder, only completed two buckets from the Marquette point guard.

Peyton Siva (G, Louisville) – Continuing with his trend, all of Siva’s nine assists in Louisville’s 95-87 win over Memphis were either threes (6) or layups (3). He distributed the assists pretty equally between Russ Smith (3), Rakeem Buckles (3), Chris Smith (2) and Kyle Kuric (1).

Brian Voelkel (F, Vermont) – He had eight assists for Vermont in a 73-72 loss to Iona. Four went for threes, three layups and one jumper. All the layups went to Luke Apfeld. Voelkel was the only forward to finish in the Top 10 in assists during a busy day of college basketball.