Jawun Evans’ Amazing Freshman Year Compares To Stars of Last 25 Years

I was inspired to write about Jawun Evans after reading this on how he could legitimately have a Chris Paul-like second season in Stillwater. Doug Gottlieb has compared him to Paul on multiple occasions so I decided to look back on whose freshman campaigns in the last 25 years are good comps for Evans’ first.

College Basketball Reference has a sweet tool where you can look at single seasons in which a player has averaged X points, X boards and X assists per game. I did this for freshman guards since 1993 (as far back as the tool goes) who have averaged 12 points a game, 4.5 assists, 4 rebounds and 1 steal. The tool spit me back 19 names (including Evans’). I’m pretty sure you’re going to recognize a few of them.

Russell, Wall, Rose, Nelson and Williams. Whoooooooo boy. And Evan’s first year in college might most most resemble that of Rose. They are different players, for sure, and have much different bodies. But there are certainly worse people to compare your numbers to.

Paul doesn’t qualify because he didn’t average four boards a game, but he averaged six assists, three steals and 15 points. So you can see the error in sorting through players and numbers like this.

Still, I’m fired up to see what Evans does in Year 2. Especially in a new system that (presumably) takes advantage of his outrageous skills. Maybe Evans isn’t the next CP3 (or Rose or Russell), but he’s one of the better point guards Oklahoma State has ever had, and that’s good enough for me.