This season’s freshman class in college basketball was touted to be one of the best in years. So far, it’s lived up to the hype.
And AJ Dybantsa is right in the middle of it all.
BYU’s superstar is averaging 20.3 points, 6.6 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game thus far, most recently going nuclear in the second half against Clemson earlier this week to lead a wild, record-setting comeback victory at Madison Square Garden.
As excellent as Dybantsa has been, he isn’t alone in setting the basketball world on fire as a first-year — Cameron Boozer, Darryn Peterson and Caleb Wilson have also hit the ground running, with the quartet tempting every uncompetitive NBA team to tank for the opportunity to draft one of them.
In a recent piece for The Ringer, analyst Danny Chau wrote about the aforementioned four freshman phenoms, including plenty of praise for BYU’s Dybantsa.
"Dybantsa has every possible physical tool a team could ever want out of a primary wing: height, length, speed, power, fluidity, ground coverage," wrote Chau. “Despite all that — and notably unlike his contemporary in Peterson — he doesn’t really play like how you might expect. He’s often taken the road less traveled, finding new movement patterns and configurations that express his immense athletic gifts.
“On the break, most players built like Dybantsa might just make a beeline to the rim at cruise-control speeds. AJ, though, might start skipping, elongating his strides to throw off the backpedaling defender’s sense of rhythm. Dybantsa is constantly adjusting the time signature of his dribbles on the fly. He is intentionally offbeat. Once he has a defender on their heels, that’s when he starts playing the familiar hits.”
Chau then compared Dybantsa to one of the NBA’s current superstars — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder, the league’s reigning Most Valuable Player.
“There’s no one Dybantsa has studied more in the past year than SGA. But where Shai developed his style to make up for a lack of size and overt athleticism in his youth, Dybantsa is applying those same tenets from a place of physical surplus. He is already one of the best slashers in college basketball, and the amount of attention he draws with the ball in his hands has allowed him to flash his massive strides as a passer.
“He’s making the right reads when drawing multiple defenders and has shown off some flair with crosscourt passes that make full use of his height. As he gets more and more comfortable creating for others with a live dribble, we could be looking at a 6-foot-9 primary pick-and-roll initiator down the road.”
While Chau raved about his offensive skills, he did admit any concerns about Dybantsa would fall “largely on the defensive side of things,” but that it was an area still with plenty of room to grow going forward.
“Still, his defensive impact is stronger than his paltry steal and block rates suggest, simply by virtue of how much ground he can cover in motion,” Chau said. “Effort isn’t the issue as much as internal recognition — the latter can easily develop with time under the right auspices.”
Early impressions of other top prospects
Cameron Boozer, Duke: “No one in this class can touch Boozer’s body of work. Cam is one of the most accomplished high school basketball players of all time, with a list of accolades on par with the likes of Lew Alcindor and LeBron James. The long-heralded son of Carlos is also on pace to shatter college efficiency metrics. After nine college games, Boozer leads the country in box plus-minus, with a figure that would rate as the highest recorded since the stat was first tracked 15 years ago.
“... Much like his father, Boozer is a genius in the post who overwhelms opponents with a youth-defying combination of physicality, tenacity and next-level attention to detail at just 18 years old. But he might have even bigger selling points in the NBA than his father. Cam’s interior play laid the foundation for his game to expand over the past few years as he grew more comfortable extending his range, pulling up off the dribble, creating shots for himself through off-ball movement, and allowing his basketball instincts to make the game easier for himself and others on both ends of the court.”
Darryn Peterson, Kansas: “You’ll hear a lot of comparisons for Peterson that can seem overwrought, even forbidden. MJ. Kobe. Penny (Hardaway). His style evokes some of the greatest swingmen in basketball history.
“... Peterson is a brilliant shotmaker, a dramatically improved on-ball creator, and an unholy terror on defense. It’d be impossible to justify some of the comps he’s getting if he weren’t.
“... The way Peterson moves, the command he has in getting to his spots, at just 18 years old, is startling. He possesses an economy of motion that players — even the great ones — seldom access in their teenage years, if ever. His dribbles don’t connect through chains; they flow frictionlessly through gradients. He finds uncommon angles of attack because he can manipulate his pace and orientation instantaneously.
“And those very same tools turn him into a wraith on defense, latching on to the ball handler at the point of attack or emerging out of thin air to wrest the ball away from an unsuspecting driver.”
Caleb Wilson, North Carolina: “Wilson is perhaps the biggest eye-of-the-beholder prospect of the lot; his irrepressible physical talent and relentless motor have rocketed him up big boards and crash-landed him into what was supposed to be a big three at the top of the draft ... He’s 6-foot-10, with a massive wingspan and gangly frame, and his dunks (of which there are so, so many) are almost cartoonish in proportion.
“... As raw as Wilson may appear to be, he has a refined understanding of how to use his gifts to manipulate defenders. Wilson’s lower-body flexibility allows him to find uncommon driving angles; his long, protracted strides alter his downhill tempo without losing the critical velocity for liftoff. His dunks are astonishing in part because they don’t look violent until he punches the ball through the hoop at his apex.
“... He demonstrates excellent vision and touch on high-low passes and hit-aheads in transition, making full use of the weird arm angles that his wingspan allows for. The jury is still out on whether he can extend his shot behind the arc, but he already shows remarkable coordination and balance on Rasheed Wallace–esque baseline fallaways and spinning midrange fadeaways. The final frontier for Wilson might be figuring out how to triangulate his explosiveness, the touch he exhibits on passes, and playing through contact on drives."