How Trae Young became the biggest thing in college basketball

The defining story lines of the 2017-18 college basketball season were supposed to be set before the first games even tipped off.

How will the FBI probe into the sport affect the season?

Are Marvin Bagley, Michael Porter, and DeAndre Ayton the next trio of super freshmen?

Can Sean Miller and Arizona finally get over the hump and into the Final Four?

Is Miles Bridges going to have a Blake Griffin-esque sophomore season?

What’s Grayson Allen going to do next?

We’re less than two months into the campaign and Trae Young has already pushed all those things to the back burner. The 6’2 freshman point guard who wasn’t even a top 20 player in the 2017 recruiting class has made the college basketball season his by putting up outrageous numbers and doing so in a new and dazzling manner.

Young currently leads the nation in both scoring (29.6 points per game) and assists (10.7 assists per game). The only player in the history of Division I to lead the nation in both those categories at the end of a season was Dick Groat, who averaged 26.0 points and 7.6 assists per game at Duke during the 1951-52 season. With all due respect to Groat — who went on to be an eight-time MLB All-Star and the 1960 National League MVP — there were approximately 3,000 fewer Division-I basketball players in 1952 than there are today. If Young were able to pull of the feat in today’s climate of 351 co-existing D-I basketball programs, it would be nothing short of miraculous.

Young’s impact on the game has been so far-reaching this season that it’s become a common question at the press conferences of coaches who have seemingly no connection to the Sooner star. Kentucky’s John Calipari, who made Quade Green his class of 2017 point guard priority after Young had been unwilling to ink with UK during the early signing period, was asked about what might have been earlier this week.

“I knew he was good, which is why we recruited him so long,” Calipari said. “But I didn’t realize he’d be able to do what he’s doing. Basically 80 percent or 70 percent of their baskets, he either scores or assists. That’s a ridiculous number. So I’m happy for Trae. I hope we don’t ever have to play him.”

Calipari has built a living on getting the best freshmen in the country to come play for him and put team in front of self. That being the case, Young’s shoot-first reputation during his AAU days might have been what convinced Calipari that refocusing his attention on Green, a more traditional floor general, wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. It also might be what finally pushed Young to Oklahoma, a program still trying to adjust to life without Buddy Hield. The post-Hield era allowed Lon Kruger to make a keepable promise to Young that if he became a Sooner, the offense would run entirely through him from day one of the season. That promise was kept, and the results have surpassed anyone’s wildest expectations.

In a somewhat ironic twist of fate, the one-and-done era has presented college basketball with a star-power problem. Sure, we get to see future NBA superstars who would have otherwise skipped college entirely suit up in university duds for a few months every winter, and that’s cool. But right when the sports world learns the name of a standout freshman, who he plays for, and what he does especially well, it’s time for him to move on and become a millionaire.

This is all fine for the young man, but for college basketball it presents an issue. A player becoming widely recognizable means he’s likely not long for the amateur game. And in the rare event that there is a widely recognizable player who hangs around the college game for multiple seasons, he now becomes saddled with the stigma of not being good enough. Otherwise why play the game for free?

In keeping with this modern phenomenon, Young’s rapid ascension to the top of the college hoops stardom rankings has come hand in hand with questions about how his game might translate at the NBA level.

The easiest response to the hoard of Steph Curry comparisons that are now floating around everywhere is to say that they’re lazy and unfair. But isn’t this the case with virtually every amateur to pro comparison? The whole point of the exercise is to frame a player’s skill set in a way that isn’t wholly accurate but easier to digest for the average sports mind. Young isn’t Curry, but watch any segment of any Oklahoma game and you see why the parallel continues to be drawn.

For starters, there’s the range. Like Curry did at Davidson and continues to do now with the Warriors, Young is capable of pulling and hitting from just about any spot inside midcourt. His lightning fast release makes it possible for him to get the shot off without a whole lot of space or lift.

Young, like Curry, also has the atypical ability to wow spectators without possessing next-level quickness or above-average athleticism. “Shiftiness and an innate feel for the game” are rarely characteristics that draw in the average fan, but Young has made that the case in under two months as a college basketball player.

Here’s another comparison for the purpose of framing Young’s impact in an easy to digest manner: Forget pro potential, he’s the sport of basketball’s biggest must-see college performer since Jimmer Fredette was pulling up from 30 feet every other possession in 2010-11. Sure the time in between has produced more elite NBA talent and better college players, but there hasn’t been anyone who could make people turn away from a top 10 showdown in favor of watching a game featuring Northwestern State the way Fredette could and the way Young is.

The “legend of Trae Young,” a tale that spans a grand total of nine weeks, has become so overwhelming that it has reached a segment of the American sports world that typically doesn’t lend an eye to the college hoops world until after the Super Bowl. The college basketball writer who generally doesn’t field “tell me about” questions from friends until late February or early March has been bombarded with “tell me about this kid from Oklahoma questions” before the calendar even flipped. Young has become a fixture on ESPN scream-at-each-other debate TV shows and national scream at each other debate radio shows.

The numbers and the highlights and the buzz are all staggering, but the most amazing part of Young’s impact on college basketball has received virtually no attention.

After crashing the Final Four in 2016, Oklahoma tumbled back to earth in a major way last season. The Sooners went just 11-20, won only five conference games, and finished next-to-last in the Big 12 regular season standings. While Young was a nice recruiting pull for Krueger, there wasn’t anything else on OU’s 2017-18 roster to indicate that this would be anything other than a bad team with a talented freshman who might put up major numbers because of his lack of a supporting cast. As a result, the team was picked to finish sixth in the 10-team Big 12.

Young’s outrageous numbers haven’t just elevated himself, they’ve elevated his entire team. Oklahoma currently finds itself with an 11-1 record, three wins over top 25 opponents, and as the No. 7 team in the Associated Press poll. All this being the case, there is a very real possibility that anyone who hasn’t experienced Young’s brilliance by the time March Madness rolls around will have multiple opportunities to watch the transcendent point guard do his thing on the sport’s biggest stage.

A tournament run feels like the only way Oklahoma’s season can end. After all, this is Trae Young’s year.