Each summer, I carve out time to study Missouri’s transfer additions in their previous stops. The viewing menu starts with games against teams that finished in KenPom’s top 100. From there, I use descriptive stats to identify five “median” performances — games that best approximate a player’s typical workload and production. Those viewings form the basis of the Swing Skill Series, which blends data and film to isolate one facet of a player’s game that could shape the scope of his impact once he puts on black and gold.
When useful, I also supplement those full-game viewings with a “median-volume” clip pool, isolating games where a player’s offensive possession count reflected his normal workload.
When Missouri lands a commitment, coach Dennis Gates usually lets a meme do the talking. Over four years, he’s commented publicly on just six of 46 pledges. Until Bryson Tiller’s commitment, which prompted a call back to the offer Gates extended while still at Cleveland State, it had been two years since he added a missive.
Then Gates weighed in again when BYU transfer Kennard Davis Jr. joined the Tigers on May 1.
“Combo Guard,” Gates posted.
Long before the portal opened, MU’s need for a guard who could create and shift off the ball was an open secret. Jason Crowe Jr. is immensely talented, but his panache as a passer remains theoretical. Asking a freshman to shoulder 30 minutes and 30% usage each night is rare — even at blue bloods.
It wasn’t until late April that MU zeroed in on Davis. They targeted him a year earlier when he left Southern Illinois, only to see the St. Louis native jump at a robust offer from BYU. With two words, Gates’ missive might have been a concise attempt to allay anxiety.
Or that’s the generous interpretation.
As a reminder, Davis’ on-ball role wasn’t precisely planned at SIU. Salukis coach Scott Nagy started the experiment to save a season slipping away after a 0-5 start in the Missouri Valley Conference. The salvage job wasn’t entirely successful, but it helped Davis put up 18.4 points over the final dozen games of his sophomore season, setting up a nice payday in Provo.
At BYU, though, the theory that Davis could operate as a jumbo creator took a dent. His usage rate slipped to 14.3%, and he operated mostly as a floor spacer alongside Rob Wright III and A.J. Dybantsa. But as we noted when Davis committed, MU thought the Vashon product was miscast out west.
Now in Columbia, MU hopes to chart a middle path: tapping into the on-ball agency he showed in Carbondale without making him a primary creator. Striking that balance sounds simple, but it requires fine-tuning — easing the strain on Crowe without asking Davis to manufacture offense on every trip.
MU isn’t betting on Davis becoming a lead guard. The objective is far more pragmatic: use his pull-up jumper to punish passive coverages and force compromises at the point of attack, then trust his passing vision.
Yet that logic breaks down when defenders stay attached. Davis still struggles to generate the initial separation needed to collapse an interior defense. Without an advantage, possessions usually degrade into one of three outcomes: a loose handle, a battle to decelerate, or a rushed look at the rim.
Let’s pause to remember MU has a legitimate reason to put the ball in Davis’ hands. As a sophomore, he averaged 0.993 points per possession in pick-and-rolls, ranking in the 84th percentile nationally, per Synergy Sports. That included hitting 50% of his pull-up 3s and posting 1.2 PPP after turning the corner and reaching the cup.
At his best, Davis only requires a drag or step-up screen early in a possession to be decisive in one or two dribbles. Those pull-ups aren’t just the chief tool in his scoring package. When a guard dips under, or a big man hangs in deep drop, a shot goes up. If that big engages, slips, rolls, and pops emerge. Reaching the paint forces low help rotations and opens kickouts.
This is where the value of a dozen-game sample rests in the eye of the beholder. To MU, it’s proof of concept that Davis’ shooting off the bounce can unlock potential as a facilitator. But there’s also enough data and film to suggest his stroke wasn’t potent enough to dictate every coverage, and it didn’t stop opponents from icing side ball screens or switching.
Sifting through Davis’ film produced two complementary samples: 31 completed pick-and-roll passes and 16 turnovers. Assembling them helps examine what happened after Davis delivered the ball and why unsuccessful on-ball actions hit turbulence – not to calculate an assist-to-turnover ratio.
Of the 31 passes, 27 led to a shot, drive, layup, or foul, but only nine were credited as assists. Seventeen generated catch-and-shoot 3s, which the Salukis converted at a 41.2% clip. Four ended in turnovers, but none were charged to Davis.
Those samples suggest Davis’ modest assist totals obscure his value as a passer. What it doesn’t do is transform him into a table-setting lead guard. His 14.5% assist rate at SIU and a 1.3 career assist-to-turnover ratio still fall well below that profile. Instead, we’re left with a useful distinction: Davis routinely sees the first read, but he doesn’t always create or preserve the advantage to capitalize on it.
Evaluating point guards partly entails discerning how often they manipulate pick-and-roll coverages. Now, Davis can toy with the backline once it engages, particularly against drop. The limiting factor is whether he can create enough separation against an attached or switched defender to force that engagement. Fire up the film and you’ll see Davis wasn’t routinely turning the corner, putting multiple defenders in limbo and quickly clicking through progressions.
No surprise, then, that Davis thrived against drop, where the big man hangs out well below the ball screen. His seven charted passes against it produced 1.571 PPP and zero turnovers. Crucially, it allowed Davis’ shooting and passing to reinforce each other. Knocking down triples off the bounce forces a big to react. When that happened, Davis swapped roles and started teeing up Salukis.
Typically, Jarrett Hensley played the dutiful role of screener, preferring to pop instead of rolling down the lane. Creating those pick-and-pop looks required Davis to gain enough depth on his drive to engage the drop defender and delay a recovery to Hensley.Unfortunately, Hensley’s downstream choices weren’t always best, including a couple of turnovers.
Filling behind a downhill drive is a close cousin of the pick-and-pop. Those kickouts tend to be late decisions after a handler is deep in the paint, drawing two guys to the ball once the primary defender recovers. Davis possesses the frame and functional strength to absorb contact and make that read feasible.
Sometimes, opponents subtly upped the pressure at the point of attack by having a big softly hedge or switch the action. There’s a natural countermove: slip the screen. That requires a screener like Hensley to read his defender, but it falls apart if Davis can’t make his pass on time and on target.
The critique sharpens when Davis can’t shed his man.
Faced with switches, he struggled to attack a defender’s top foot to open their stance and create an angle. On some trips, Davis needed Hensley or Rolyns Aligbe to flip the screen or re-screen. Yet a persistent on-ball defender prevented that by fighting over, pushing Davis into drop coverage without putting a big into conflict. High-major opponents like Oklahoma State and Florida deployed ice coverage in side ball screens, hemming Davis in and preventing him from attacking the middle.
Davis’ size remains handy for seeing over defenses and playing in a crowd, but it doesn’t produce an automatic mismatch. His burst and vertical pop are modest enough that defenders recover.
When Davis can’t separate, a sobering causal chain unfolds: his primary defender sticks to his hip while the big remains close enough to recover to Hensley. Drives that don’t reach the nail won’t force weak-side defenders to stunt into a gap, and the rim protector can loiter around the cup. At that point, Davis’ ability to process the second and third levels becomes moot because the defense never has to reveal them.
It’s also where Davis’ turnover tally creeps up.
Of the 16 giveaways in the pick-and-roll sample, just five resulted from poor passes. Most trace back to a loose handle or faulty footwork as he tried to decelerate. The broader issue isn’t what Davis sees. It’s whether he keeps the ball under control long enough to act on it.
The data also keep any diagnosis from being simple. Davis is a right-hand-dominant driver, but turnovers are split evenly by direction. Here’s what usually happens:
- Davis’ defender remains attached after the ball screen
- Davis cannot create a second angle
- Davis attempts to decelerate, pivot, or change direction
- Davis’ feet and handle become disconnected
Davis’ mishandles are the most acute reflection of his issues against aggressive coverages in side ball screens. In the snippets below, he lacks the burst to use his right hand to accelerate past a big and attack the baseline. Rejecting the screen to attack the middle required using his weaker left hand.
The possessions in which defenders raked the ball from Davis’ hands also tended to begin in the slot or against assertive coverages that erased space and time. At UNI, a stunt to the nail and a late switch led to a jump ball. Belmont sent a delayed trap after SIU ran a horns set in the right slot while Davis was committed to a righty drive. High Point had guards fight over screens and handoffs while bigs played closer to the level of the screen.
Lastly, some turnovers resulted from body control. A road trip to Oklahoma State saw him struggle to throttle down and drag his back foot, resulting in a pair of travels.
Failing to create or maintain an advantage might not always end with a turnover, but it does flatten out the results. For example, eight of Davis’ charted passes were ball reversals. Those passes kept the ball moving but only produced one bucket. Put simply, they functioned as escape valves rather than creation events.
Such distinctions sharpen developmental priorities beyond adding dribble counters. It’s more elemental: protecting the ball when changing pace, slowing down without slipping, establishing a dependable jump stop, and recognizing when an initial action is dead in the water.
That’s the risk tucked inside Gates’ designation. Deeming Davis a combo guard isn’t a blank check to treat him like a primary creator. SIU’s lineup data also offer another reason for restraint.
Two years ago, SIU posted a 105.3 adjusted offensive rating with Davis on court — roughly 1.3 points lower than when he sat. Davis’ most common lineups produced a 104.7 offensive rating across 1,064 possessions, with the most-used combination landing at 103.4 points per 100 possessions.
Although Davis appears in the point-guard column for every listed lineup, the designation is mostly organizational. Elijah Elliott handled much of the primary initiation before tearing his ACL in a blowout loss at Florida. And even after Davis assumed nominal lead-guard duties, the Salukis gave Ali Dibba license to attack, while Sheridan Sharp came off the bench to play point guard in limited minutes.
Which raises the next question: What conditions set Davis up for success?
For a start, Davis needs mobile screeners who can slip, roll and pop, recreating the decision tree Nagy built for him. Because Davis isn’t always explosive attacking a gap, surrounding him with shooting to punish help, particularly from the weak-side corner, is vital. Having another handler to put the defense in initial rotation is another condition, met by Crowe’s presence.
MU’s scheme could also help. Gates empowers players to attack within the first seven seconds. Mix in drag screens, and the Tigers can tap into Davis’ pull-up prowess.
Careful calibration might be required for second-side action in the half-court. Can MU work in ghost screens and slips? Empty-side ball screens or handoffs flowing from MU’s delay sets would depend on big men who can connect the action, while horns-out sets could allow Davis to make high-low passes to Bryson Tiller and Jaylen Carey posting up without backside help.
When Davis isn’t on the ball, he needs to bang in enough jumpers to keep gaps open for Crowe to warp a defense. Last season, he drilled 35.5% of spot-up triples, including 14 of 38 stationary attempts. Those results suggest a functional spacer, but a minor boost could expand his value as a secondary creator. Harder closeouts offer a favorable first step without asking him to manufacture separation.
Ideally, Davis’ job description isn’t overloaded: bring the ball up, trigger sets, run selected ball screens, punish defenders who go under, and make the sound reads we saw at SIU. Bland as that sounds, it relieves Crowe of organizational work. Mix in spacing duties from BYU, and the projection holds up.
What Missouri truly requires is for Davis to recognize when the floor is tilted, force the next defender to commit and stay in control long enough to exploit that choice. Do that often enough, and Gates’ appraisal might hold up.