Texas Basketball: 3 best players from Shaka Smart-era so far
1. Jaxson Hayes, Power Forward/Center
The most recent star that Longhorn basketball fans got to see develop in Austin is the former four-star recruit and 6-foot-11 and 220 pound big man Jaxson Hayes. This Loveland, OH, native and Cincinnati Moeller High School product only spent one season on the Forty Acres, just like Bamba and other respective Longhorns star big men like Myles Turner and Jarrett Allen.
Although, Hayes was an accomplished advanced analytics darling more so than either Allen or Jericho Sims. Allen and Sims were two of the better and more efficient big men that have also stood out under the direction of Smart.
He led the country in field goal percentage, true shooting percentage, and was top 20 in the nation in defensive box plus/minus and overall box plus/minus rating.
Hayes managed to rake in All-Big 12 Second Team honors, Big 12 All-Defense, Big 12 All-Freshman, and the Big 12 Rookie of the Year award at the conclusion of the 2018-19 season. His efforts didn’t get the Longhorns into the NCAA Tournament last year, but they did impress the fan base and see his draft stock explode as the season moved along.
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In his one year in Austin, Hayes played in 32 games (starting in just 21 of them). He spent much of the first half of the year coming off the bench behind Sims in the frontcourt rotation. But he did average an impressive 17.1 points per 40 minutes, 8.6 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 1.0 steals, and 3.8 blocks, while shooting 72.8 percent from the field.
Hayes also posted a wild 138.7 offensive rating and 95.6 defensive rating to go along with a 12.1 box plus/minus rating, .230 win shares per 40 minutes, 10.6 percent block rate, 73.9 true shooting percentage, and 27.0 player efficiency rating.