Texas Basketball: 3 players most likely to transfer this offseason

The third year for rising junior power forward and former four-star recruit Kamaka Hepa is going to be key if he’s going to make a true impact during his time with this program. Texas brought Hepa to campus with the hopes that he would blossom into a solid two-way forward and a good outside shooter.

Spacing the floor is something that the Longhorns really need in their frontcourt rotation heading into the 2020-21 season. Smart’s teams don’t tend to keep a good trend on floor spacing, but they actually did in the back end of Big 12 play last season. Texas ranked among the top three teams in the Big 12 last season in three-point shooting percentage, at better than 33 percent.

However, Hepa wasn’t much help to the Longhorns efforts in three-point shooting last season. In general he didn’t help make much of an impact in any area of the Longhorns game during his sophomore campaign. In 22 games played last season, Hepa averaged 2.9 points per game, 2.0 rebounds, 0.6 assists, and 0.6 blocks, while shooting 36.1 percent from the field, 29.2 percent from beyond the arc, and 66.7 percent from the charity stripe.

A box plus/minus rating of 4.4, .092 win shares per 40 minutes, a 4.9 percent block rate, and a true shooting percentage that jumped nearly six percentage points indicates that Hepa made some strides last season. But if Smart doesn’t help to maximize his defensive potential while utilizing his volume shooting and floor spacing abilities, then he might be best served elsewhere.