How did Ohio State freshman Brice Sensabaugh get to this point

Quite simply, Brice Sensabaugh continues to get better as the season progresses. For the year, the Ohio State freshman is averaging 17.4 points and 5.5 rebounds while shooting 46.7 percent from three. In nine Big Ten games, Sensabaugh is averaging 19.0 points and 6.8 rebounds while shooting 48.8 percent from three.

The 6-foot-6 wing has also entered the starting lineup for the team’s last 11 games. He has played more minutes and provided more production, but also he has shown more efficiency. These shooting, and scoring numbers, are part of the reason Brice Sensabaugh has been shooting up NBA Draft boards and mock drafts. He has shown to be one of the most prolific scorers in college basketball to this point.

This should not have come as a surprise to any who watched him in high school, but at this level, it did. So I wanted to go back through my notes in the Sensabaugh file.

Scouting Sensabaugh

Brice Sensabaugh came in at No. 58 in our final 2022 On3 150 player rankings. He was solidly in the top 100 and pushing the top 50, so we were not far off with him at all. A look back through my notes on him, and I see words and phrases like “a bucket” and “wired to score.” Those pieces have obviously not changed.

I also see questions noted about his weight and his ability to see the floor. While Sensabaugh was a good team defender, I questioned if he would be able to slide his feet and guard wings or if he would have to be hidden on defense or played as a four. There was also a meniscus injury that caused him to miss his junior year of high school.

Sensabaugh played his final season of travel ball with the Each 1 Teach 1 program on Nike’s EYBL Circuit. Also on that team are two players showing up in the first round of various NBA Mock Drafts, Taylor Hendricks (UCF) and Dillon Mitchell (Texas). The team was loaded, also featuring Bruce Thornton (Ohio State), Ben Middlebrooks (Clemson), and Fabio Basili (Louisville).

What led us to rank Sensabaugh ahead of most was his ability to score it effectively. He led this Each 1 Teach 1 team in scoring by a wide margin putting up 17.7 points per game. While the shot selection was questionable at times, no one on the team seemed to mind that he was taking 67 percent more shots than anyone else on the roster.

Despite his obvious questions, Sensabaugh consistently put the ball in the basket, and that data tracks back through high school. The summer between his junior and senior years of high school, he was also just returning from a meniscus tear that caused him to miss his junior season. The 17.3 points he averaged during his sophomore year were a distant memory. Coming out of May in 2021, he only carried four offers and was a back-burner recruit for high-major programs. He blew up a couple of months later, in June, ending with over 20 offers.

Sensabaugh came back as a senior to average 24.6 and end his 51-game high school career with 1,064 points.

The takeaway

Bill Russell famously said, “This game has always been, and will always be, about buckets.”

The ability to score the basketball is so important in today’s NBA. With the rule changes administered to enhance the pace and enable the shooter, teams are averaging 114.2 points per game this season. In the 2003-04 season, LeBron James’ rookie season, teams averaged 93.4 points. That is a 20.8 point per game difference over the last 20 years.

As scouts, we look toward predictable outcomes, and we cannot account for what a player does to reshape his body or late growth in a frame. For as many players as we see grow or drop/add weight, we see two, three, or four times as many who simply do not. While Sensabaugh still has work to do, you can see some chisel in his frame as he no longer wears a t-shirt under his jersey.

His ability to create space is unique. The eye test shows Sensabaugh as a player who can use an array of pivot manipulations and jab steps to create clean looks in the half-court. His analytics also show that he is shooting a fairly even 48.1 percent off dribble jumpers and 49.3 percent off catch-and-shoot jumpers. While there is a 53 to 44 percent split between dribble and catch jumpers, the eye test will also tell you a majority of those dribbles are so he can re-gather balance and re-set his feet. He simply scores the ball in a variety of ways.

Sensabaugh had questions; however, the scoring popped. While he had him higher than most, looking back at the way he scored, we probably could have given him a little more of a bump.