Reed Sheppard's ability to force turnovers has impressed Sporting News columnist Mike DeCourcy. (Vicky Graff Photo)
Why was Reed Sheppard so underrated by so many national college basketball analysts?
Sporting News columnist Mike DeCourcy has a possible explanation.
“Because most people, and I count myself in this group now, are not able to attend summer basketball tournaments like they used to,” said DeCourcy. “We are somewhat reliant on recruiting analysts to get the rankings and how good players might be.
“They (recruiting analysts) do a good job. They work hard every weekend but I don’t think fully as a group they have not embraced how important shooting is to basketball in 2023. They under-rank players like Reed who are good players and great shooters and in Reed’s case he was vastly underrated.”
Sheppard’s freshman backcourt teammate Rob Dillingham was rated above Sheppard but had a lot of questions going into the season.
“I see a player who can get where he wants on the court and if he can do that he causes huge damage,” DeCourcy said. “With his ball handling and quickness he can get where he wants and that is a huge advantage over the average player.
“He is shooting at such a high clip from 3. It’s going to be hard to maintain that high number all year. Remember even Devin Booker struggled at times during his freshman year and had a really tough slump. Even the best shooters have slumps but he’s been very elite with his shooting and play,” DeCourcy said.
The national columnist also knew the return of 7-footers Aaron Bradshaw and Ugonna Onyenso would not slow down UK’s offense because of the way Sheppard and Dillingham play.
“Aaron is not really a post up guy. You want to do that on occasion to get the defense in foul trouble and throw it inside to force the defense to get off shooters. You want to have but not exclusively that. They want to play with pace,” DeCourcy said.
“One reason they will not stop playing with pace is Reed. I have seen very few players with the innate ability to get the ball out of other team’s hands like he can. Part of that is his quickness but he also has a real understanding about where the opponent is going with the ball and that gives him the ability to create turnovers.
“Rob and DJ (Wagner) also have great quickness and those turnovers lead to runouts. That’s why UK was not going to slow down.”
3 Responses
Reed’s best attribute is that on the rare occasions that he makes a mistake, he normally will follow it up with a steal, block or other play to redeem himself. Definitely not your normal freshman player.
Well if they are one/done he plays like a senior. These writers are what’s partly wrong with college ball anymore. They constantly have to write some hog wash about some things except for LV. He has experience. All the others are "click bait"
Reed Sheppard wasn’t ranked high because he’s a white kid from London Kentucky. If he was black and from a Philadelphia or any other big city he would have been in the top 10 in the nation.
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