Drew checks in on a deep and experienced High Point Panthers team.
High Point Roster
High Point This Season
In only two seasons, Coach Alan Huss has built High Point into a Big South bully. In 2023-’24, his first as a head coach, Huss, guided the Panthers to a 27-9 record. They won the Big South regular-season championship but lost a heartbreaker to Longwood, 80-79, in the Conference Tournament, eliminating them from NCAA contention.
They left no doubt this season, finishing 14-2 to win the regular season crown and then winning the requisite three straight games in the conference tournament to make the Big Dance. Their run wasn’t without drama, however. Radford almost clipped them in the semi-finals, but they managed to win 76-73 before boat racing Winthrop in the Conference Championship game 81-69.
Alan Huss is a name to keep an eye on moving forward. If he keeps this up, he’ll be moving up in the coaching ranks sooner rather than later.
High Point on Offense
The Panthers stake their program on offense. It’s not often that you face a 13th seed with the 25th most efficient offense in the nation. High Point is interesting because they’re not your typical high-volume, run-and-gun mid-major, hoping to get hot behind the arc and pull and upset. They play at a moderate to slow pace and don’t take an inordinate number of three-pointers.
Their top two scorers, Kezza Giffa and Kimani Hamilton, are both better at scoring on the inside than bombing away from deep. Neither will hesitate to hoist up an offering from deep, but Keeza is only shooting 31% on 119 attempts, and Hamilton isn’t much better, hitting 32% of his 81 attempts. High Point wants to attack the basket at every opportunity. Giffa has attempted 197 two-pointers and has converted on 52% of them, while Hamilton has attempted 210 and is converting at 60%. As a team, High Point converts on 57.4% of their two-point attempts, good for 15th in the nation. That’s not ideal for a Purdue team that’s one of the worst in the country at defending the basket.
To further compound Purdue’s potential future misery, Giffa and Hamilton are in the top 100 in the nation at getting to the foul line. Giffa draws 5.8 fouls per 40 minutes, and Hamilton draws 5.7. Not only do they get to the line, but they convert, with Giffa shooting 86% and Hamiton hitting 71%.
I’m not going to lie; watching their win over Winthrop in the Big South Championship game gave me indigestion. At one point, it looked like Winthrop would walk away with the game. They were up 18 in the second half with around 15 minutes remaining, but High Point stuck with a game plan and relentlessly attacked the rim at every opportunity. They outscored Winthrop 52-30 in the second half in one of the more dominant displays of basketball I’ve witnessed in a Championship Game. High Point hit the gas, and Winthrop didn’t have an answer in the second half.
Part of what makes High Point difficult is its depth.
They are a legit 10 deep, and Coach Huss doesn’t hesitate to use all 10. Bobby Pettiford, a reserve guard, was the MVP of the Big South Championship game. Terry Anderson came off the bench and provided a crucial spark when it looked like the game was starting to get away from the Panthers in the second half. Abdoulaye Thiam scored 12 points in 19 off the bench, including a few critical threes.
In the second half of the Big South Championship game, you could almost see Winthrop fading under the relentless procession of bodies from the High Point bench. The Panthers are an equal-opportunity offense. When someone sees an opportunity to get to the basket, they try to get to the basket. It doesn’t matter if they’re a bench player or a starter. They make everyone on the court guard and don’t let you hide players on defense. Again, that makes me nervous as a Purdue fan.
While they prefer to attack inside, they have capable shooters on the perimeter. They are an analytics-driven team that will try to score within five feet and behind the three-point line. When their inside game is working, their outside shooters feast on kick-outs. Chase Johnston is far and away their best shooter. He has attempted 153 deep balls and has converted 43% of them into points. D’Maurian Williams is another player with deep range; he’s hit 39% of his 103 attempts this season. They don’t rely on the deep ball, but they have capable shooters, and their 36.6% season average is the 50th best in the country.
One thing High Point doesn’t do well is pass the ball. Their offense is predicated on dribble drives instead of passing. They average an assist on 45% of their possessions (328th in the nation), and Purdue averages an assist on 58% of their possessions (53rd in the country). Their lack of passing helps keep their turnovers down because most drives end in a shot, but the one player who looks to get everyone else involved is Bobby Pettiford. His 29% assist rate is far and away the best on the team. He may come off the bench, but he’s the guy that makes the game easier for everyone else.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention 7’0”, 255-pound center Juslin Bodo Bodo. He won’t beat you with skill, but he’s a big dude with some serious bounce. His 65% shooting percentage from two was 78th in the nation, mainly because he limits his shots to put-backs, drop-off dunks, and lob dunks. He’s someone Purdue has to put a body on. High Point will throw the lob. That’s especially true on baseline out-of-bounds plays where they like to get him moving toward the rim.
High Point is an equal-opportunity offense that spreads the scoring between multiple players. Giffa, Hamilton, and Pettiford are their three best, but everyone gets into the act. Purdue will need to be locked in on defense at every position because the Panthers will search out a weak defender on every play. They don’t particularly care who does the scoring as long as the ball goes in the bucket at the end of the possession.
High Point on Defense
It’s clear Coach Huss built this team to score because, despite a weak schedule, as good as they are on offense, they’re not very good on defense. Their adjusted defensive efficiency was 226th in the nation. They don’t turn teams over that often (224th in the country), and they foul a good bit.
With that said Juslin Bodo Bodo is a problem on defense. For a reason, the nimble but solid center is the back-to-back Big South defensive player of the year. He averaged 1.4 blocks a game, and his presence alone sends many guards retreating from the paint. I’ll be interested to see how Coach Huss deploys him against Purdue. I think they’ll put him on Furst to start the game, but when Heide comes in, they’ll either have to put him on Trey or risk giving up open corner threes because Bodo Bodo doesn’t leave the paint. He averaged 4.3 fouls a game this season, tops in the Big South, and the sooner Purdue can get him off the floor, the better because he makes scoring around the basket difficult. Backup center Simon Hilderbrandt is a solid player, and he asks some questions on offense that Bodo Bodo doesn’t, but he’s nowhere near the same level of defender. The Boilermakers must prioritize getting him off the court early in the game.
Other than Bodo, they’re an average defensive team. They’re 120th in three-point defense and 97th in two-point defense. Outside of the aforementioned Bodo, they don’t block many shots, and their steal percentage is surprisingly low for a team that goes ten deep. They don’t do anything particularly challenging on defense (at least that I saw). They mainly guard their own guys, play straight-up man-to-man, and let the chips fall where they may. Since they don’t offer much help on defense, one place they excel is shutting down passes. Their opponents are only credited with assists on 43.1% of their baskets; that’s the 18th-best in the nation. That’s impressive, but they haven’t played against a guard like Braden Smith this season; they haven’t played anyone close. It will be interesting to see if Braden can find a few cracks that other point guards have missed.
Purdue should be able to put some points on the board.
Prediction
Ken Pom
Purdue – 82
High Point – 73
Confidence – 80%
Drew
Purdue – 77
High Point – 64
This appears to be an unpopular opinion on the national stage, but I’ve got the Boilermakers winning this one comfortably … in the end. I expect High Point to put up a game effort, but in the end, Purdue’s offensive efficiency, paired with their big-game experience, wins the day.
Braden breaks out of his shooting slump, Trey continues to dominate, and Fletcher’s elbow is OK. High Point is a solid mid-major, but I think the Boilermakers have enough top-end talent to get the job done.