Caleb Love, Donovan Clingan and the most intriguing men’s college basketball players – The Athletic

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Here comes college basketball, hastening to the first tipoff in less than a month, and we’ll see a lot of familiar faces when it arrives.
But this is not about what we know. This is The Athletic’s 25 Most Intriguing Players for the 2023-24 men’s hoops season, a collection of players in compelling roles or circumstances — and it’s not clear what will happen from there.
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Purdue’s Zach Edey, for example, was the No. 1 player on this list a year ago. Then he became the consensus national player of the year. Which means Edey is not on this list again, because while a 7-foot-4 Canadian is always compelling, we know he’s very good at basketball. This is more about who may impact programs and the sport without quite as much certainty.
On to this year’s curiouser and curiouser group …
The 6-9 forward started 36 games for the Longhorns last season. A significant step forward in sheer availability for a former All-SEC talent who’d battled constant injury issues for two seasons between Vanderbilt and Texas. Only problem? In Game 36, in the NCAA Tournament against Xavier, Disu re-injured his foot after two minutes. This after he’d been on a relative spree from mid-February on, averaging 14.3 points and 6.8 rebounds in his last 11 full games. And no one has a definitive timeline for when Disu will be back on the floor; Texas coach Rodney Terry declared in early September that the program is playing the “long game” with the recovery, and that tune has not changed. After the mess of Chris Beard’s firing, a remarkably self-actualized and self-motivated group played like one of the best teams in the country. Terry has the gig he has, too, because he helped keep those threads from fraying. But this won’t be another team on auto-pilot. Disu’s presence is even more a necessity than it was last season. Just when he makes his presence felt, though, is a total unknown, at a moment when Terry has a chance to establish his bona fides for a long stay on the job.
The whole scenario is amazing. Rick Pitino is back in the Big East at a spry 71 years of age, having unapologetically obliterated the roster he inherited to replace it with many transfers he’d prefer to coach. One of them is the Ivy League Player of the Year — the second-leading scorer in the country last year, actually, with 23.4 points per game at Penn — and this is tremendous. But you don’t have to try hard to take it seriously. Dingle has solid size for a Big East guard at 6-3, he spent 27.3 percent of his possessions as a junior as a pick-and-roll ball-handler (resulting in .841 points per possession, rating as “very good” per Synergy Sports) and he can simply make shots — he took 19 unguarded jumpers all season and still averaged 1.03 PPP on jump shots overall. (According to Synergy, Dingle ranked in the 100th percentile nationally in contested jumpers taken.) He clearly wants to prove himself at a higher level and, as such, will happily absorb all of the head coach’s full-throated instructions. A smart fit. And … who knows how it will go? Who knows how any of this will go in what might be Pitino’s last charge? That’s the fun of it all.
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An introduction is probably in order: The 6-10 forward played two seasons at hometown Tennessee before transferring. He’s now a two-time Big South Defensive Player of the Year and the reigning league player of the year, period, after averaging 21 points and 9.2 rebounds with an effective field goal rate of 53 percent while also topping the 40-point mark three times during 2022-23. The Bulldogs’ trip to the NCAA Tournament last spring was their fifth ever and first in eight years. Pember totaled 7.1 Win Shares last season, which tied UCLA’s Jaime Jaquez Jr. for seventh nationally. Why does any of this matter? Well, UNC Asheville brings back six of its top seven rotation players, in terms of minutes per game. It added veterans in transfers Evan Johnson (three years at Georgia Southern) and Greg Gantt Jr. (three seasons split between Providence and NC State). With all that game experience orbiting Pember, the Bulldogs can be a sneaky dangerous mid-major. And that means their 41-year-old coach, Mike Morrell, could be on your school’s list if it’s in the market for a new leader. Essentially, Pember makes a whole lot of things possible.
🚨HE’S BACK🚨
Drew Pember officially announced today that he’s coming back for the 2023-24 season!!!#ALLinAVL #IWWD pic.twitter.com/oRwoDjwZOQ
— Asheville Basketball (@UNCAvlMBB) March 29, 2023

Shaka Smart’s crew finished with the seventh-most efficient offense in the country last year. Its starting five, specifically, was the fifth-most efficient lineup anywhere, per Evan Miyakawa’s ratings. The one guy now missing from that group is Olivier-Maxence Prosper, who wound up being a first-round NBA Draft pick. The guy expected to replace him, the 6-foot-8 Joplin, was the Big East’s Sixth Man of the Year. Seems like an easy, seamless, logical transition … which guarantees nothing in terms of results. Chemistry can be weird, and Marquette again will be as good as its offensive flow. Joplin is a bit more of a floor-spacer as a near-40 percent 3-point shooter, maybe a slightly better ball-mover and pretty much an even trade as a rebounder. He’s not a Prosper clone, and that’s fine. Coaches are paid to find ways to maximize the nuances in every player’s game. But this is a preseason top-10 team that won 29 games last season. It’s not a small-stakes adjustment for Joplin and the rest.
Here’s the short version: The 6-8 senior is a first-team All-MAC performer and a former league defensive player of the year after coming to Akron … on an academic scholarship. Had zero college basketball offers, period, at any level. John Groce and his staff discovered Freeman at an open tryout on campus. He’s averaged a double-double in both of his last two seasons — one of 13 Division I players to do so in 2022-23, when he had 18 such performances in total — while posting a 4.0 grade-point average in his MBA program and serving on the student council, according to Groce. Oh, and Freeman didn’t transfer, despite having the opportunity to do so, instead opting to toil at the mid-major level for one last season with no guarantee of an NCAA Tournament bid at the end. Freeman’s entire basketball existence cuts against the grain of college basketball normalcy, in the best ways possible.
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Preseason Mid-Major Top 10: FAU, Saint Mary’s and Boise State lead the way
Few players are as emblematic of general program angst. Here’s guessing Illini fans aren’t utterly dismayed by recent results … but they’d like to see a little more for the talent that’s come through Champaign. Which brings us to Hawkins, a 6-10 forward who looks comfortable on multiple levels and therefore sets imaginations running wild, to the point he had slots in NBA Draft mocks during his junior season. And, in the end, he wound up being basically the same guy he was as a sophomore. The counting stats went up as Hawkins’ minutes did, sure, but his per-40-minute production was flat. His 3-point shooting (28 percent) and Win Shares per 40 Minutes (.121) both fractionally slipped from the previous season (29.2 percent and .133, respectively). The dynamics around him are different. Less is being thrust upon callow guards. A wing like Southern Illinois transfer Marcus Domask arrives with an assist rate north of 25 percent. (Matthew Mayer, by comparison, finished at 8.4 percent last season.) This is a plus; Hawkins is still a big who needs some help getting into advantageous positions. But individual player development remains the key. And that’s on the player and the Illini staff to make happen in a real, impactful way. If the talent is there, now would be the time to do something big with it.
Another embodiment of a theme: The sustainability of The Jerome Tang Effect. An explosive sub-6-foot guard (Markquis Nowell) keyed a 12-game turnaround in Manhattan and a run to the Elite Eight in Tang’s first season as a head coach anywhere. And now here comes the 5-11 Perry, the Conference USA Player of the Year while at North Texas in 2022-23, whose offensive rating (124.3) ranked fourth nationally among players who used at least 24 percent of their team’s offensive possessions, per KenPom. His .254 Win Shares per 40 Minutes ranked sixth nationally. In a way, Perry is heading into Year 1 of the two-year track set by Nowell; Nowell was good but not revelatory in his first season after transferring up from the mid-major level and then crashed the national scene the next season. What changed in between, of course, is Tang. Is Perry on a faster track, simply because his new head coach has done this before? Will the Tang Party rage on?
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After Elite Eight run in Year 1, Jerome Tang dreams even bigger
The 6-3 sophomore’s hometown, Lafayette, Calif., is a 10-minute drive from campus. He played youth basketball with Cade Bennett, the son of Saint Mary’s head coach Randy Bennett. He then scored 25 points in his first collegiate game and finished as the Gaels’ second-leading scorer (13.9 points per game) while earning first-team All-West Coast Conference honors. Granted, Mahaney slammed hard into the freshman wall late — one double-digit scoring effort in his last six games — but he showed more than enough evidence he can evolve into the sort of fearless shot-maker who can help take down any team, of any distinction. (When you post an eFG of 61.6 percent on guarded jump shots, as Mahaney did as a freshman, it’s an auspicious sign.) He’ll have to actually evolve into that guy, of course, if Saint Mary’s wants to spend multiple weekends in the NCAA Tournament. But one can imagine Mahaney cutting that sort of Hero-of-March profile, at some point. Which brings us to the amusing conclusion admittedly stolen from my friend and editor Brian Bennett: Randy Bennett built a program recruiting guys from Australia and wound up with a star that he found in his kitchen.
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When you’re playing for your dad, and you’re playing at conference-player-of-the-year levels for your dad, and the conference you’re doing that in is the Missouri Valley Conference … almost by complete accident you are making it harder for the school you play for to keep your dad. So it goes at Drake. Darian DeVries, the head coach and the dad in question, has a 122-48 record in Des Moines and a contract that runs through 2028-29. The more he wins, the less the fine print matters to motivated power-league administrators. Tucker DeVries, the 6-7 forward who averaged 18.6 points with an eFG of 53.9 percent as a sophomore, makes it more likely the wins keep coming. And then what? If all goes to plan, does a father-son combo get booked for main-stage performances in 2024-25? Is the kid good enough to leave college hoops behind altogether? It’s all about what the DeVries clan accomplishes this season and the reverberations it will cause.
Buzz Williams, you have our curiosity. Semi-known fact that the Aggies won 15 of 18 games in the SEC last season, perhaps obscured by that first-round NCAA Tournament loss to Penn State. We keep waiting for this program to be exceptionally good under the seemingly perfect guy to run it, and maybe this is it? Texas A&M has two semi-small guards who give opponents the emery board treatment nightly, and that seems to be a pretty good place to start for success both during the season and in March. The most important cog is Taylor, one of the most effective pick-and-roll guards in the country. A mere 1.096 PPP in those scenarios as a sophomore, good for the 96th percentile nationally, per Synergy Sports. The 6-footer improved in every essential category last year and as such his Win Shares per 40 minutes jumped from .106 to .207 — a number that ranked fifth in the SEC, for reference. His offensive rating (113.8) ranked 16th in the country among high-usage players (28 percent of possessions or more), per KenPom. It could be that Taylor gets incrementally better, where it’s hard to notice. Or he becomes the next undersized guard to captivate the country.
So many narratives. All the narratives, even? Arguably the best player for the Owls on their way to one of the most unlikely Final Four appearances ever — the 6-4 guard averaged 21.1 points and 8.3 rebounds per 40 minutes as a junior — and back for one last run. He’ll be a test case for loyalty, for ignoring transfer-portal opportunities to double down on your current home — and whether that’s a viable, constructive path to the pros. (Davis withdrew from the 2023 NBA Draft pool after reportedly working out for a half-dozen teams.) He’ll be in the middle of Dusty May’s program taking a step up to Conference USA and facing the twin challenge of succeeding against a higher level of competition while not succumbing to satisfaction with the 2022-23 results. Or, for that matter, succumbing to individual interests more than common team goals. Davis will be an integral part of a fascinating build in its early stages — May signed an amended contract over the summer that runs through 2032-33, and we’ll see how tethered he is to that — or maybe he’ll be a comet passing through the sky that one time. Some of this we won’t be able to contextualize until years from now. But Davis can establish the framework for that discussion over the next few months.
Mr. Smart Basketball Writing Guy, declaring that the best prospect in the nation to attend college is interesting. Bold. The most fire of takes. But there was USC starting official practices in September … and the headlines revolved around the health and whereabouts of Bronny James. Which, of course. Everyone wants to see the kid recover from suffering cardiac arrest in July and have the chance to explore his potential. Meanwhile, Isaiah Collier is actually playing basketball for the Trojans and is better than Bronny James. At some fundamental level, all great players want to be noticed. Collier probably will make that happen with his production, but what will the vibe be if James recovers well enough to contribute on the floor this year? If Collier is a can’t-miss star and all people want to talk about is Bronny? The guess is the prospect of many millions of NBA contract dollars will be enough to keep Collier happy and on mission. But egos make strange things happen, sometimes.
Oxygen may be scarce with Hunter Dickinson in the room for an entire season, and that’s kind of the point. The 6-7 Adams was the Big 12’s Most Improved Player as a sophomore, basically doubling his per-40 minute scoring output and finishing with double-digit points in 20 of his last 29 games. Adams was not a call-his-number offensive option for Bill Self, though; 66.9 percent of his possessions, per Synergy Sports, were as a roll man off screens, a cutter or in transition. But maybe some go-to-him stuff was the next step in 2023-24. Meanwhile, in comes Dickinson, theoretically a top option to slot into those screen-and-rolls and to deploy as a big target heading toward the rim. Does that literally and figuratively get in Adams’ way? Is his pretty strong upward trajectory stunted by the presence of a potential All-America 7-footer? Or does Bill Self do Bill Self things and find ways to maximize Adams with Dickinson on the floor and scheme Kansas into a ridiculous amount of close-range opportunities to feast upon? It could be the difference between Kansas being quite good and more or less unguardable.
Ah, the X-factor. That most reliable college basketball trope. It cannot be resisted, particularly when a player’s name makes it too deliciously cheesy to ignore. But seriously, we know a lot about a lot of Tom Izzo’s players. That’s why the Spartans are No. 6 in The Athletic’s preseason top 25; talented experience abounds, which is a pretty good foundation for winning in modern college hoops. They also have Booker, the consensus No. 13 prospect in the country, a five-star 6-11 specimen who could be really good. He could also scuffle a bit as he develops during a trying nonconference schedule. Or he could do it all: scuffle and develop and be really good by February and March. What Michigan State gets out of Booker may be the difference in an attempt to get Izzo that second national title. With the head coach approaching 70, and with the Big Ten becoming even more taxing with the addition of UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington in 2024-25, this might be the program’s best chance to do so for a while.
This is strictly about how good the 6-4 junior can be, and how Greg McDermott plans to deploy him. The starting point is fairly advanced; Alexander averaged 13.6 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.6 assists as a sophomore, making a massive leap, particularly as a shooter (41 percent from 3-point range, up from 28.1 percent as a freshman). So does he become the primary attacking option as a scorer, or does he morph into something of a playmaking initiator after point guard Ryan Nembhard transferred to Gonzaga? Or is it a bit of both, given that the head coach is smart enough to let his best players make the best play that presents itself? Alexander’s raw assist numbers were flat year-to-year — he was at 2.5 per game as a freshman — so that may be the element primed for noticeable improvement this time around. And if he’s a lead guard for a top 10 team averaging something like 18/6/5 or better for the season, with some eye-catching scoring nights scattered in there, it’s an All-America candidacy waiting to happen.
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Here’s a fun (or not-so-fun) fact about the 6-9 forward theoretically sliding in as the Zags’ next prolific post presence: He didn’t play last season. Not once. Not a minute. Last appeared on March 15, 2022, in Wyoming’s First Four NCAA Tournament loss to Indiana. Sat out the entire 2022-23 campaign after suffering a leg injury during the preseason. Of course a guy who averaged 1.22 PPP on shots at the rim — who in particular converted at 1.468 PPP on offensive rebounds — would be coveted by a program that just lost a generational big. Is Ike still that guy? How much will a year and a half between competitive games create a lag on his performance — if it does? Maybe no one anticipates 17.3 points and 8.5 rebounds a night … but Ike probably at least needs to be in that neighborhood, consistently, for the Zags to contend at an elite level.
Again, sometimes these calls are self-evident. It is a particularly consequential year for the Wildcats and their head coach, with all sorts of existential questions swirling about the macro direction of the program and the microsystem it runs, just as a more classically Caliparian recruiting haul arrives to go with experienced cogs. We know generally what to expect of those guys. We know slightly less about Wagner, the consensus No. 6 recruit in the Class of 2023 per the RSCI, and how he will mesh over the long haul. The initial results — 14 points, 4.8 assists, 42.1 percent shooting overall on a summertime Canadian tour — were semi-auspicious. Anyway, it’s Kentucky. Success should be built-in to the operation. Wagner is a variable who will impact how successful the team is, significantly. He’ll probably be good. But we can’t say how good for sure, and that’s kind of a big deal. Sometimes it’s that simple.
Too high for a guy who averaged 11 points and shot 36.7 percent as a freshman? Not considering the stakes for the program. Loyer’s performance from November 2022 to January 2023 was one of the most consequential from any freshman in the country, as a primary floor-spacer for Zach Edey … and then came the proverbial wall. And Loyer hitting it. Hard. A calf injury that hindered him over the second half of the year surely didn’t help and explains at least some of that. He’s fully healthy now, but he’s not a whole lot bigger — Purdue lists him at 180 pounds — so endurance will be a question until it isn’t. If the Boilermakers fully rinse off being the second-ever No. 1 seed to lose to a No. 16 seed, which is the whole idea here, Edey will be the main reason. Of course. But the more consistent shooting Purdue has around the Big Maple, the larger Purdue’s margin for error will be. It’s critically important. And a lot of it falls to Loyer.
The ride is curious enough. Top 20 prospect signs with Stanford. Averages 10.5 points and 5.8 rebounds and 3.7 assists and shoots less than 40 percent from the field across two seasons. Does not, in any appreciable way, improve from season to season or match the production the program needed from a five-star signee. Then Ingram joins a program reeling from one of its most disappointing seasons ever, with a head coach suddenly short on benefit of the doubt, becoming once again a fairly important cog from which production is very much needed. We’ll see how it goes. North Carolina apparently has an idea for maximizing what Ingram does well, while avoiding asking him to do too much. If Hubert Davis and company are right, and using the 6-8 junior as point-forward surrounded by scorers is the way to unlock him — Ingram posted a 26.8 percent assist rate as a sophomore — then the tremors may cease in Chapel Hill. If it doesn’t work? There could be enough seismic activity to reshape the entire college basketball landscape.
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Marks: What I’m hearing about UNC’s newcomers and possible lineups this preseason
Fire up the YouTube clips and watch Mara’s highlights and it’s plain why The Athletic NBA Draft analyst Sam Vecenie calls the Spanish teenager a “basketball savant.” The behind-the-back pass out of a double-team on the block, finding a cutter for a layup. The over-the-shoulder alley-oop to another cutter for a bucket. The good hands, the many dunks, and yes, again, a no-look bounce pass off the dribble for a backdoor score. Also: Mara is 7-3. Bodies that large normally don’t do such things so fluidly. And now for the “yeah, but:” Those are highlights. By definition, they’re Mara’s best foot forward, for anyone with an internet connection to see. How he holds up over a full college basketball season, colliding with 20-something bigs on a regular basis, is a question. How well he adjusts to Mick Cronin’s demands is a question, particularly on the defensive end. How well the entire Bruins operation functions is a mystery, given the influx of foreign talent beyond just Mara. Does pegging the 18-year-old as a potential first-round pick in 2024 guarantee his floor is high? Or do we have to leave a lot more room for variability in the projection?
Aday Mara was the most productive player at the FIBA U17 World Cup, averaging 28 points (70% FG%), 11 rebounds, 4 blocks, 3.5 assists and 2 steals per 40 minutes. He towered over opponents at 7-3, being an absolute force around the rim thanks to his massive reach. Highlights: pic.twitter.com/PC6xSnI2tP
— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) July 20, 2022

As Blue Devils coach Jon Scheyer would put it: The 6-8 sophomore is going to be good. The consensus No. 22 recruit from the Class of 2022 will be an important cog for what could be one of the nation’s best teams. This much is no mystery. But the what-could-be is the point, too. The assumption in Durham is that three mainstays — Kyle Filipowski, Tyrese Proctor and Jeremy Roach, in no particular order — are going to more or less be elite performers. So what happens if Mitchell evolves into a fourth? What if he’s even just that much better than a guy who scores 9.1 points per game and shoots 35.2 percent from 3-point range, as he was during his freshman season? His head coach believes Mitchell can be one of the best at his position, anywhere, and maybe the best, period. What if that happens? It’s maybe the difference in this new era of Duke basketball having another good year … or a defining one.
No shortage of reasons why the first year of the post-Jay Wright era didn’t go smoothly, ending with a 17-17 record and a sixth-place finish in the Big East. But if restricted to a two-word explanation for the results, here’s betting many Wildcats fans would go with “Justin” and “Moore.” The program didn’t have its connective fiber on the floor until Jan. 29, when the 6-4 guard finally reappeared after rehabbing a torn Achilles tendon. Moore wasn’t a massive revelation; the Wildcats were 7-6 in games he played, and his .119 Win Shares per 40 Minutes ranked fifth on the team in the end. Still, 13.2 points and 3.5 assists and an effective field goal percentage of 52.2 would’ve been useful over a full season. Certainly, the start could’ve been steadier. How Moore complements and leads a reloaded roster is critical in both the short- and long-term for the program. Another rough go, with the talent on hand, might have Kyle Neptune facing some uncomfortable questions after Year 2. After being a big reason why Villanova scuffled to find an identity last year, Moore could be the biggest reason the program finds itself again.
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Two bins of opinion to rummage through, when considering why the consensus No. 6 recruit in the Class of 2022 didn’t cause much of a ripple in one season at Oregon. The first is that Ware’s primary recruiter and the guy he built the deepest trust with, Chris Crutchfield, left to become Omaha’s head coach before working with Ware for a single day. Which, with the youths of today, can complicate things. The other thought, as proffered by a Pac-12 coach from another team? Ware just wasn’t tough enough. (He averaged .915 points per possession on post-ups as a freshman, per Synergy, while shooting 63.2 percent on shots at the rim, with 10 missed dunks. What does being “not bad, just fine” in those situations tell you about a young big man? Eye-of-the-beholder stuff.) Now Ware joins a fleet of long, athletic bodies at Mike Woodson’s Indiana, where he’ll be under still greater scrutiny in a deeper league. As a 7-footer with the potential to move and space the floor a bit, Ware will be an NBA prospect until proven otherwise. The question is whether he’ll indeed prove otherwise, or if Woodson’s background pays dividends in the development process.
Turns out being enormous and athletic is a pretty good combo in basketball! Or at least it’s worked out well for a Canadian guy at Purdue. Which potentially makes the 7-foot-2, 265-pound Clingan the next object of national fascination — particularly if the sophomore is somehow even more impactful as a two-way player for the defending national champions. On a per-40-minute basis last year, Clingan produced 21.1 points, 17.1 rebounds and 5.5 blocks. Zach Edey, aforementioned Canadian star and large human, was at 28.1, 16.3 and 2.7. The difference is doing it over extended stretches, not just in the 13.1 minutes Clingan averaged as a freshman. But, again, we’ve learned this is possible. When you’re skilled and also bigger than everyone else, you tend to keep scoring and rebounding for as long as you’re on the floor. The on-the-floor part is now a massive variable, with Clingan out for a month with a foot strain — when the history of big men with foot issues is not great. It’s fine for now. The Huskies have other options. But they’re not overly deep. If Clingan stays healthy and, say, doubles his minutes while maintaining his production? That may be a problem few teams have an answer for.
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UConn’s next big star plays for his father in the stands and his mother watching from above
The shorthand version — five-star recruit, to Coach K Slayer and Final Four star, to an outcast twice-over, kind of — is far too reductive. But Love is also the first to concede that his college basketball career has had its peaks and craters. He’s at Arizona after a season of great expectation and grievous disappointment at North Carolina and a failed transfer attempt to Michigan, which wouldn’t accept enough of his credits to make it feasible. How a player with 1,476 career points and a 36 percent career shooting rate assimilates in Tucson, and what kind of player he becomes for Tommy Lloyd, is a most fascinating experiment. The general idea from both program and player is that Arizona’s overall philosophy, and in particular its offensive structure, will help Love with shot selection and shot quality. The situations in which Love is forced into a tough look should be rare. Which is important, because Love did post a career-best shooting percentage on 2s as a junior (45.5 percent) while posting a career-low 12.5 percent turnover rate. Lloyd says he’d quibble with maybe three of Love’s 31 shot attempts on Arizona’s foreign tour over the summer, even as the player missed 14 of 16 3s. So if the pressure is off and — as all parties expect it to be — is an efficient guard with the ability to occasionally go nuclear in there? Whatever the answer is, it defines the Wildcats’ ceiling after a stunning first-round loss to No. 15 seed Princeton last March. And it’s also the final word on a player desperate to prove he is who he insists he can be.
(Top photos of Caleb Love, Donovan Clingan and Mark Mitchell: Courtesy of Arizona Athletics; Carmen Mandato and Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

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Brian Hamilton joined The Athletic as a senior writer after three-plus years as a national college reporter for Sports Illustrated. Previously, he spent eight years at the Chicago Tribune, covering everything from Notre Dame to the Stanley Cup Final to the Olympics. Follow Brian on Twitter @_Brian_Hamilton

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