Mizzou Athletics
The Tigers struck quickly this spring in adding jump shooting specialist, Jacob Crews, to a roster plagued by inconsistency from outside a year ago.
Over the weeks leading up to the season, this series will dive deep into the players we see making a push for time in the rotation for the 2024-2025 Missouri basketball squad. The pieces read like a birds-eye scouting report. They skew more toward the offensive end of the court for two reasons. First, a player’s offensive metrics are more reliable than defensive data and less team-dependent. Second, it’s considerably easier to describe a player’s qualities with more well-known offensive statistics. As always, we encourage interaction from our readers. Please drop us a comment or find me on Twitter @DataMizzou.
The film credits are given to Matt Harris. Matt has provided all of the film used in this series, and plenty more video and analysis on every player that can be found on https://rockm.plus.
The Player
Jacob Crews has taken a circuitous route to Columbia.
The 6-foot-8 wing from Hilliard, Florida, had a brilliant prep career, amassing over 2,500 career points and earning a scholarship offer from Matthew Driscoll and the North Florida Ospreys. In 2024, this wouldn’t be an unusual starting point to land in the Southeastern Conference. However, Crews’ route was not so smooth.
The marksman failed to gain any traction in the Division-I ranks, appearing in just half of his team’s games over his two seasons in Jacksonville.
Unsurprisingly, Crews transferred. But unlike many of his contemporaries, he sought out the junior college ranks to rekindle the flame in his game. He joined the Daytona State College program led by Joey Cantens. While there, things clicked. Crews earned NJCAA second-team All-American honors and was named his conference’s player of the year. His play caught the eye of coaches in the D-I ranks.
He would eventually commit to Tennessee-Martin, a program led by coach Ryan Ridder, who got his start in the JUCO ranks. Crews helped lead the Skyhawks to a three-way tie for the regular season crown in the Ohio Valley Conference. UT-Martin’s season ended with a disappointing loss in the conference tournament to Morehead State, who went on to earn the OVC’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Yet Crews’ performance spawned immediate interest from programs across the country.
Once Ridder hopped to Mercer in mid-March, Crews got a head start on finding a new home via the transfer portal. Just four days later, Dennis Gates and his staff landed one of the best shooters available all spring.
Jordan Prather-USA TODAY Sports
The Numbers
Stats from Barttorvik.com
If the introduction to Crews didn’t properly inform you of his career transformation during a year away at Daytona State, surely the graph above will. Crews’ performance at North Florida left much to be desired, and his career appeared to be stalled. Two years later, he became a transfer prospect valued by the sport’s biggest names.
UT Martin transfer Jacob Crews has heard from the following schools since entering the portal, he tells @On3sports:
Kansas State
UCLA
Kansas
Gonzaga
Oklahoma
Arkansas
Virginia Tech
Auburn
Ole Miss
Mississippi State
Missouri
Georgia
NC State
LSU
Illinois
California
Marshall
UAB… https://t.co/VDGGR1IHjT
— Joe Tipton (@TiptonEdits) March 16, 2024
The reason for the interest was very straightforward: Crews has a big frame, and he shot the leather off the ball.
He finished the season shooting 80 of 193 on attempts behind the 3-point arc. That’s a phenomenal make rate for any player. Still, it’s practically unheard of for a player with Crews’ size — especially on such a high volume. But it wasn’t just the sheer efficiency. It was the consistency of Crews’ jumper. He drained at least one 3-pointer in 29 of 32 outings and knocked down three or more in 22 games.
He wasn’t just a streaky shooter that caught fire for stretches to balloon his percentages — though he did hit 10 of 12 in one contest against Evansville — he was a threat every time he hit the floor. Per Maxwell Baumbach of No Ceilings, a respected NBA Draft outlet, Crews was one of only eight players to make 80 total threes on 40%+ accuracy while standing 6’6” or taller last year.
But looking at Crews’ numbers, it’s not just the outside shooting that impresses you. Synergy Sports breaks down a player’s touches into 11 play types, and Crews’ efficiency graded out as above average in eight of them. In fact, he finished in the 75th percentile or better in six of them. Some of this is owed to his elite shot-making off the catch, particularly spot-up opportunities and transition attempts.
However, simply labeling Crews as a floor spacer undersells the other clubs in his bag.
Crews finished with an elite 1.061 PPP on post-up attempts that accounted for 9.2% of his overall offense. Most of these looks come from fadeaway jumpers, but those are the most difficult in the pantheon of post touches. A little seasoning and work in the offseason may add a counter going toward the rim that makes him doubly effective in that area.
Another intriguing aspect of his game is how well he did in dribble handoffs, which is a close cousin of a pick-and-roll. The only difference is swapping the ball at the mesh point as a dribbler turns the corner. Crews used this action with incredible frequency and accuracy, managing an otherworldly 1.224 PPP on a heavy 12.6% usage rate.
Crews has been so effective in alternate uses because he’s an elite mobile shooter as well. That’s something generally reserved for the shifty point guards on the floor. Nearly 30% of every jump shot Crews took was off the bounce, often using a rhythm dribble to create clean airspace for an already quick shooting release. His accuracy led to a 1.290 PPP on those attempts, which is unheard of for his profile.
If there’s a catch — and there always is — questions exist about how well Crews can translate those non-catch-and-shoot aspects of his game to the high-major level. A 6-foot-8 shooter might be the biggest player on the court on a given night in the Ohio Valley. In the SEC, that might just be another shooting guard.
Equally crucial is Crews’ defensive adaptability in a power conference. While his rebound rates are commendable, basketball is more than just about grabbing missed shots. The real question is, can he effectively defend against smaller, quicker players on the perimeter?
And how well can he guard high-major interior players on the block?
The Role
Crews joined a program with a reasonably deep bench at his desired spots. How and where he’ll be used matters. If he skews more toward a wing, he’ll have to contend with Tamar Bates, Caleb Grill and two highly touted freshmen, Marcus Allen and Annor Boateng, for minutes. Should he be seen more as a stretch four, the roster provides Mark Mitchell, Trent Pierce and Aidan Shaw as potential roadblocks.
The biggest thing Crews has in his corner is his size and shooting ability. I currently have Crews sitting sixth in the pecking order in projected minutes played at 42.7% — approximately 17 minutes per game. His usage rate will likely drop from the 22.7% mark observed last year and will most likely settle in around 19-20%.
And to be clear: That’s normal.
These marks land precisely in the neighborhood of similar players transferring from low-major schools to high majors in recent years. The most significant factor in determining how those similar players fared at their new power-conference stop: Did they make their 3s? Should Crews see the projected number of possessions on offense and maintain his efficiency, we could reasonably project that he averages around eight points per outing. If those eight points come from being a consistent floor-spacing threat, all of Mizzou’s players will be better for it.
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