College Stock Watch: Indiana’s Jalen Hood-Schifino
Making the transition from the high school to college game is quite the challenge for young athletes. As such, even the top prospects in each class can take time to develop into impactful players.
Especially in bigger conferences, it can take multiple seasons for top 100 recruits to be ready to make the jump to the NBA, if ever. With that in mind, there’s also prospects that figure it out quickly and become one-and-done athletes.
As the college season goes on, it’s becoming more clear which players at the college level are NBA talents. However, draft stocks fluctuate throughout the year, both up and down.
Whose stock has risen? What about fallen?
This week, we look at the draft stock of Indiana guard Jalen Hood-Schifino based on recent play.
Jalen Hood-Schifino (Indiana | Guard)
Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times-USA TODAY NETWORK
Stock: Rising
Season Stats: 12.6 PPG | 4.2 APG | 39.2% 3PT
While Hood-Schifino was a big recruit with high expectations coming into his freshman season as a Hoosier, he’s been better than anyone could have hoped.
The level of production from the 19-year-old has been incredible, especially as the season goes on. Hood-Schifino’s ability to build upon his success each game and improve has been wildly impressive. He’s reached a level of performance that has him in the lottery conversation, which wasn’t the case at the start of his freshman campaign.
At 6-foot-6, Hood-Schifino has the ideal guard size for the modern NBA. Backcourts around the league continue to get bigger, which makes the Indiana freshman a perfect fit on both ends.
Not only is the freshman guard a great facilitator, but he’s also proven to be a fantastic perimeter shooter. He’s converted on nearly 40% of his triples thus far, which has earned a 73 3PE from Cerebro Sports.
Hood-Schifino passes the eye test and also has all of the physical tools to be a great lead guard at the next level. The numbers back this up as well, doing a little bit of everything in the backcourt.
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