Wisconsin is experiencing an incredible season thanks to superb play from sophomore Johnny Davis. The 6-foot-5, 194-pound shooting guard has been clutch for the Badgers all season long. He’s also had some scoring outbursts that have many analysts believing he will win the Big Ten Player of the Year award.
Davis has found a way to be a fairly efficient player despite an unruly usage rate of 32% on the season. He’s had three games scoring 30 minutes or more and has scored 20 or more points on 15 occasions this season. Here are some of his stats through 28 games this season.
- 20.0 PPG, 8.1 RPG, 1.1 SPG, 2.2 APG
- 44.6 FG%, 33.3 3P%, 78.2 FT%
- 25.3 PER, 108.1 ORtg, 96.5 DRtg
The sophomore Badger is an excellent user of screens and is a master of rejecting them to get to his shot. He punishes drop coverage by pulling up in the mid-range and hitting that shot more often than not. He will also step back into a three, but he has not gotten super comfortable doing that consistently. He will have to improve from beyond the arc as well since he hits right at 33% on a pretty small volume.
He’s got some Andre Miller in his game in that he can post up smaller defenders and is comfortable doing so. He’s a solid playmaker, mostly for himself right now. But he has shown flashes of being able to get others open and has kept turnovers relatively low (less than 2.5 per game) despite the usage rate mentioned earlier.
Davis is not an elite athlete and has been beaten off the dribble by quicker guards. He will have to work on the foot speed and lateral movement a bit more to be a reliable perimeter defender. For now, he wouldn’t be a huge negative defensively and he would have to get used to a smaller role on an NBA team since he wouldn’t be required to do a lot of heavy lifting offensively. However, Davis is still the best guard prospect out of Wisconsin since Devin Harris.
