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With another 24-hour marathon in the books, another year of college basketball is officially underway! While this year will have a hard time topping the heart-stopping finish to last year's NCAA Tournament, the 2016-17 NCAA basketball season promises all sorts of fireworks, including one of the most talented collections of freshmen we've seen in years. As the season gets started in earnest, we wanted to take a look at a few of the freshmen receiving the greatest amount of hype and see what sort of things we can expect from them.

Markelle Fultz, Washington Huskies

The crown jewel of this year's incoming freshman class, Fultz has a very real chance of being the first point guard to go #1 overall in the NBA Draft since Kyrie Irving. While there's still a long way to go, Fultz clearly has the kind of ceiling we'd expect from a #1 pick, and the early results on the court have been quite promising. In his debut, admittedly against the Yale Bulldogs, Fultz showed no hesitation in taking the game over, launching 17 shots and dropping 30 points, including a promising two for five on three-point attempts. That's a much stronger start than Irving, who also faced an Ivy League school and went 4-10 from the field with 17 points.

But Irving may not be the best comparison point for Fultz. At 6'2", Kyrie was two-inches shorter in college than Fultz is. And despite metrics like Defensive Box Plus/Minus and Defensive Rating approving of Irving's performance on that end of the floor while he was at Duke, Fultz has the far greater defensive potential. Lastly, Fultz has far more promise as a playmaker; he put up six assists in his opener, while Kyrie averaged 4.2 in his brief college stint.

Indeed, there may not be a good comparison for Fultz. John Wall had the playmaking, but not the shooting. Damian Lillard took four years to evolve into the kind of scorer he was and even still, he wasn't exactly known as a distributor. Fultz's promise is that he can chip into all facets of the game. In fact, only four Power Seven freshmen since 1993 have averaged 15 points and five assists per game, along with a 35% three-point percentage, all very hittable marks for Fultz:

Some of those don't necessarily bode well as comps for Fultz, but D'Angelo Russell has been developing nicely and Chauncey Billups, of course, became an NBA Finals MVP. Add in the potential for smothering defense, and Fultz can give you basically everything a modern point guard has to deliver.

Jayson Tatum and Harry Giles, Duke Blue Devils

It wouldn't be a college hoops season if Coach K didn't have a couple shiny new one-and-done players (although not all traditions last forever: The bench in Durham is Plumlee-free for the first time since 2007-08). This year's models are Tatum, a 6'8" small forward who can score, and Giles, a big man with the ability to play power forward or center and the potential to be a defensive anchor for the Blue Devils.

The obvious comparison for Tatum is last year's 6'8" scoring wing, Brandon Ingram. Like Ingram, Tatum will have Grayson Allen around to lighten the creative burden and run the offense. Additionally, given his size, it's not unreasonable to expect the kind of defensive performance from Tatum that Coach K coaxed out of Ingram, who had a 2.9 DBPM last year.

Can he match Ingram's production for the Blue Devils? It'll take some growth from the young wing. While scouts praise Tatum's effectiveness in transition, his shooting still leaves something to be desired. That's a problem for the Blue Devils offense, which relied on Ingram's long-range shooting (he was one of only six ACC freshmen since 1993 to shoot 40% from three while attempting five per game) to space the floor for everyone else.

Meanwhile, despite having a name befitting the leader of a boy band, Giles is going to be tasked with a lot of the unglamorous, gritty work in the paint that's been tended to by various members of the Plumlee clan for the last decade. Plumlee had a 5.2 DBPM last season and even Jahlil Okafor, not exactly known for his defensive prowess, had a 4.1 in Mike Krzyzewski's system. Giles is a much better prospect than Plumlee, if a less experienced one, and seems to have better defensive instincts than Okafor, although that's not saying much. He should be more than up to the challenge.

Injuries have kept both players off the floor, likely leading to Duke's last second defeat to Kansas, but it will be fascinating to see what happens once the closest thing college hoops has to a Death Star is fully operational.

Dennis Smith, North Carolina State Wolfpack

Eighteen months ago, it was Smith, not Fultz, who seemed poised to be the next great young point guard, when he hurt his ACL. But Smith has recovered and is still considered a top prospect, although the small sample size returns are less promising than Fultz's.

In his first two games, Smith had a dismal 27.3% field goal percentage and didn't make a single three-pointer on seven tries. The latter is particularly concerning, as it's becoming increasingly difficult for a point guard without a three-point shot to make it in the NBA. Even in college, the list of freshman guards with three or more win shares despite shooting under 25% isn't especially distinguished

No one on that list really screams out "Top 5 Pick". There's also N.C. State's somewhat checkered past to consider. Despite attracting several highly touted recruits in recent years, the Wolfpack haven't had a real success story in the NBA Draft since Tom Gugliotta in 1992, and despite making an NBA All-Star Game, his most famous contribution to the game was probably being traded for Chris Webber.

Still, Smith has athleticism and players like Kawhi Leonard have shown that you can't write off a player's long-range shooting completely just because he doesn't have it as a freshman in college. Still, it's easy to see why so many scouts have ditched last year's model for the shiny new Fultz.

Josh Jackson, Kansas Jayhawks

Jackson is another player who fits the Ingram mold: a 6'8" wing with the size and length to seem like a perfect fit for the switch-heavy, position-less future NBA of scouts' imaginations.

Unfortunately, Jackson also fits the Kelly Oubre mold. The last tall wing player to come through Bill Self's system hasn't fared very well in the NBA, posting a sub-10 Player Efficiency Rating and struggling to crack the Washington Wizards' rotation to get any real playing time.

In a small sample size, though, it seems like Jackson may get to play a bigger role in the Jayhawks' offense than Oubre. Jackson is averaging 10 field goal attempts thru two games, Oubre, in contrast, took just 6.9 shots per game. However, the advanced stats tell a different story. Jackson has boasted a 22.9% usage rate so far this season, almost identical to Oubre's 23.1% usage. Both players had near identical PERs too: 21.9 for Jackson and 21.1 for Oubre.

The good news for Jackson is that he's just two games into the season: one could make the case that this is simply the foundation upon which he'll be able to build a more successful freshman season than Oubre was able to. Indeed, Oubre wasn't allowed to play any sort of real role in the offense until the middle of December; he didn't take more than five FGAs in any of his first nine games, while, again, Jackson is averaging 10 per game through two.

And what about that other highly touted 6'8" Jayhawks' one-and-done wing? Andrew Wiggins took a more active role early than even Jackson, averaging 12 shots per game in the first two games of 2013-14. Jackson's shown a little more flair from long-range, shooting 40% so far this season, and his PER is a tick ahead of Wiggins' freshman year mark of 21.4.

In short, even if you're a Wizards fan feeling burned by Oubre, Jackson is definitely still worth keeping an eye on. The early returns are quite promising, and it'll be interesting to see where he builds to from here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 17th, 2016 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Announcement, CBB at Sports Reference. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.