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Previously on Wolfpack hoops review:
One thing we learned for certain this past season is that growing a beard is good for your basketball game, or bad for it, or neither. But it’s one of those.
Braxton Beverly’s efficiency declined a smidge in his second college season, but he was essentially the same player that we saw in 2018. This year he upped his workload a bit and also ended up handling more of the point guard duties.
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Beverly led everybody on the team in minutes this year and with his expanded role attempted 63 more three-pointers than he did as a freshman. He wasn’t as effective in 2019 as he was in 2018, but I don’t think a modest increase in shot attempts has anything to do with that. If there was a factor in the dip in shooting accuracy, it was probably that he had to be on the ball rather than off it on a larger percentage of possessions.
He’s been incredibly consistent in some ways, for better or worse: he made 40.2% of his two-pointers as a freshman and 40.8% as a sophomore. He hit 39.5% of his threes against top-100 teams as a freshman and hit 39.7% against top-100 foes as a sophomore.
So Beverly has been shooting the ball better against the best teams on the schedule, and sure, that’s probably just a coincidence—but then again we could go ahead and start a narrative that he is clutch. Which is not entirely without merit, mind you.