Texas Basketball: 3 players who must step up in fall practice
1) Texas basketball players who must step up in practice: Jericho Sims
Maybe the most efficient player that the Longhorns have coming back this season is the rising senior center former underrated four-star recruit Jericho Sims. Until he wound up missing the final games of the Big 12 slate, when the Longhorns really heated up last season, Sims was on track to be an all-conference caliber performer.
He played in 24 games during his junior campaign with the Longhorns (all of which he started in). He averaged 9.7 points per game, 8.2 rebounds, 0.8 assists, 0.4 steals, and 1.2 blocks. Sims shot 65.8 percent from the field and 59.2 percent from the free-throw line. That amounted to a career-best 6.6 box plus/minus rating, .190 win shares per 40 minutes, 3.1 total win shares, 65.3 true shooting percentage, and 22.7 player efficiency rating.
It’s hard to think that Sims’ missing the last five or seven games of the regular season caused Smart’s squad to take off. But there were a number of underrated contributions that surfaced for the Longhorns after Sims missed the rest of the season due to that upper-body injury. We’ll see if that holds true again this coming season.
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Sims was very good for Smart last season, holding a team-high in field goal percentage, player efficiency rating, total blocks, box plus/minus rating, and win shares per 40 minutes. Once he gets back on the court with this team, Sims needs to take on a leadership role where he was just as efficient and productive as he was last season.