Is Omer Yurtseven starting to realize potential at NC State?

After an up-and-down start to his sophomore season, Omer Yurtseven has looked a lot more comfortable over the last two weeks, and in the last two games, he’s been a significant difference-maker. Yurtseven has scored in double figures in six straight games, and suddenly he looks like an efficient primary scorer rather than a secondary contributor.

Yurtseven’s shooting figures to this point are impressive: he is hitting 60% of his two-point attempts, and he’s also 6-7 from three. I’m gonna wager a guess here that his three-point percentage won’t last all year, but his effectiveness in the paint is sound reason for optimism.

The schedule has been rather soft up to this point, no doubt, but Yurtseven has also turned in good performances against the power-conference teams NC State has faced. His 19-and-11 effort on 6-7 shooting against Penn State was a major reason why the Wolfpack won that game.

The other encouraging aspect to Yurt’s recent play is the fact that he’s been doing this despite assuming a go-to level workload. He is accounting for a quarter of NC State’s field goal attempts while he is on the floor, which is well above average. It also represents a huge increase in workload from his freshman season, when he took only 16.7% of the shots while on the floor. (And only made 46% of his twos.)

When a guy shows dramatic improvements in efficiency despite shouldering a much bigger part of the offense, it usually portends well for the future, even if the quality of opponents has not been so good. Maybe this really is a new and improved Yurtseven.