The holiday break for colleges across the country offers an inflection point to deduce what we’ve learned and predict what’s to come. For the past two seasons, I’ve started to separate college basketball’s best players into various archetypes to better understand what they actually bring to the floor.Archetypes aren’t set in stone for everyone, but we have settled on the following 10 buckets:Initiator point guard: They can score, but most importantly, they are on the floor to make others better. Think of the Hall of Famer, Chris Paul.Combo guard: These guards can play on or off the ball and do a little bit of everything offensively. Think about the king Walter Clayton Jr.Shooting guard: These guards are snipers. Their job is to hit 3s and create space for others using their gravity. Think of sweet-shooting Klay Thompson.True wing: These wings can do everything offensively, and the best ones can defend multiple positions. Think of the explosive Terrence Shannon Jr.Scorer/creator: These guys walk onto the floor trying to get buckets and can usually get 20 whenever they want. Think old friend Caleb Love. Off-ball wing/4: These wings can guard multiple positions, but they tend to have a smaller role offensively, usually operating as a spacer, cutter or play-finisher. Think Alex Karaban (spoiler!).Wing handler: These wings tend to be primary on-ball creators who can run pick-and-rolls or even do some backdowns. Think former Duke stud Cooper Flagg.Stretch 4/big: These bigs tend to play on the perimeter. They don’t have to shoot 3-pointers, but it usually helps the offense when they can stretch the floor. Think ex-Villanova star Eric Dixon.Small-ball big: These bigs can guard multiple frontcourt positions easily and do a bunch of dirty work inside. They tend to have good, not great, measurables. Think Texas Tech’s JT Toppin (spoiler, part two!).True 5: These centers tend to have excellent positional size and almost always defend opposing centers. Think of Creighton’s All-Timer Ryan Kalkbrenner.So, which college basketball players are best at their position? We are not extrapolating out to NBA potential. This is simply factoring what we’ve seen through the first two months of the season and projecting what we will see over the next three-month sprint.Obviously, numerous players can fit in multiple different buckets, but we tried to find the role that they will most likely play for…
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2025-12-23 18:27:15
