Draft Preview: Stephon Castle Fits the Bill for Raptors as Another Winning Prospect

UConn's Stephon Castle is the type of winning prospect who would give the Toronto Raptors a defensive difference-maker at the top of this year's NBA draft

Connecticut Huskies guard Stephon Castle (5) celebrates after a foul call / Grace Hollars/IndyStar / USA TODAY

The Toronto Raptors have a track record of prioritizing collegiate success.

Save for Bruno Caboclo, all of Toronto’s first-round picks over the past decade have come from winning college programs. It’s a strategy that makes a ton of sense: Players from winning programs have developed winning habits.

In this year’s class, few players fit that description better than UConn’s Stephon Castle, the 19-year-old freshman guard who helped lead the Huskies to a 37-3 record and a national championship this past season.

“He’s a proven winner who does the little things that don’t show up on the box score and is self-aware enough to adapt to what his team needs on a given night,” said Nicholas Crain of FanNation’s NBA Draft site. “He always gives 100% effort regardless of the score and has the intangibles that every good NBA player needs.”

That’s what makes Castle such an intriguing prospect at the top of this year’s draft class and the kind of player Toronto will certainly be doing due diligence on should the organization keep its top-six protected first-round pick this weekend.

Castle is a defensive game wrecker.

Over the course of UConn’s title run, he essentially ran through March Madness shutting down all the best guards and wings in college basketball. He’s a daunting point-of-attack defender listed at 6-foot-6, 215 pounds with the kind of feistiness to fight through screens and defend across positions.

But what is Castle offensively?

He played as a point guard in high school but was asked to be more of an off-ball player for the Huskies this season and it’s led to questions about what he can do offensively. He averaged 11.1 points, 2.9 assists, and 1.5 turnovers per game while shooting just 26.7% from three-point range. Those stats certainly don’t suggest he projects as a 3-and-D wing but they're also not impressive enough to suggest he can be an on-ball difference-maker at the next level.

“The inconsistent shooting is what will keep Castle from being drafted as high as he should probably go, along with a lack of exposition and burst,” Crain wrote. “He also wasn’t able to show much of his isolation scoring upside or self-creation given UConn’s system, so it’s still difficult to determine if he projects to be an off-ball complimentary scorer or a top option.”

For Toronto, there’s certainly a lot to like with Castle. He’s the kind of defender the team so desperately needs right now after trading away OG Anunoby earlier this year. He has that kind of stick-to-itiveness to be a nuisance on the defensive end for opposing teams and has a track record to suggest he's a winner.

But the Raptors don’t have a ton of wiggle room for another non-shooter in their core and if Castle doesn’t develop as a shooter and can’t carry the offensive workload as an on-ball player, his fit with the current roster could get pretty awkward.