He’s looking forward to facing top guards
Coming off a season-low-tying, three-point effort against Arizona last week, Darius McNeill sat down with the Cal coaching staff to do some binge-watching.
The Bears’ freshman point guard barely recognized the guy wearing his jersey in videos from games during the previous two weeks.
“I’ve never played like that in my career,” the 6-foot-3, 175-pounder from Houston said. “It was a lot different for me. I was timid. I was unsure.
“I was trying to get a feel and trying to figure out how to score at a high level in the Pac-12.”
After an attention-demanding start to his college career, opponents moved him to the top of the scouting report. With two months of video and data having been compiled on the newcomer, conference coaches were finding ways to eliminate everything that propelled his fast start.
All of a sudden, McNeill was passing up shots he consistently made during the nonconference portion of the season and was overthinking his way into paralysis. The difference in his production during a six-week span early in the season and his numbers during a twoweek skid this month is cosmic.
From Nov. 16-Dec. 30, McNeill averaged 14.9 points per game, including a 30-point onslaught and two 20-point outings. The lefty shot 52.8 percent from the floor, including a 6-of-7 three-point shooting night that boosted his three-point percentage to 47.5. He averaged 2.4 assists to 2.3 turnovers and 1.5 steals.
But from Jan. 4-Jan. 17, McNeill averaged 7.6 points per game, including four singledigit performances after being limited to fewer than 10 points only once in the previous 16 games. He shot 30.4 perfect from the floor, had a poor assist-to-turnover ratio (1.8to-2.4) and recorded only one steal per game.
After the marathon video session, McNeill responded with a 16-point game against Arizona State and played 38 minutes without committing a turnover. He’ll take that confidence this week with him to play the Los Angeles schools — the ones that started the skid and have arguably the conference’s best point guards.
“They’re two good point guards, who know how to get their teammates involved,” McNeill said. “They’re also experienced. They’re high IQ players. I’m going to stay aggressive, run my team and try to get the wins.”
Cal plays Thursday at UCLA, where Aaron Holiday provides the Bruins with their grittiest source of much-needed toughness and ranks fifth in the conference in scoring (18.8 points per game) and is tied for third in assists (5.1 per game).
On Sunday, the Bears are at USC, where Jordan McLaughlin fuels the Trojans, averaging a conference-best 7.5 assists as well as two steals per game.
“I don’t usually put it out there like that, but in my mind, I’m trying to go at any of the top point guards in this league,” McNeill said. “I want to show that I’m just as good as them.”
McNeill thinks he knows just how to do it, too. Since opponents are running him off the three-point line, he needs to use his quickness to get inside the arc.
From there, he can showcase his mid-range game, draw fouls on his way to the basket, throw lobs to Marcus Lee or toss kick outs to open threepoint shooters.
“I could have easily just taken crazy shots when I was struggling, but I didn’t want to settle,” he said. “Now, I see that I just need to play my game, play with confidence and aggression.”