Michigan basketball in contact with Oklahoma State point guard transfer Javon Small
Michigan Wolverines basketball has been in contact with Oklahoma State guard transfer Javon Small, he told On3. Other schools that have reached out include Texas, Kansas, Louisville, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Kansas State, Mississippi State, Texas Tech, Indiana, LSU, Georgia, Villanova, Xavier, Arizona State, Villanova, Cincinnati, TCU, Texas A&M, Georgetown, Miami and Baylor.
Small played his first two seasons of college basketball at East Carolina, before transferring to Oklahoma State for the 2023-24 campaign. With the Cowboys, Small played under Mike Boynton, who was let go after the season and is reportedly set to join Michigan head coach Dusty May as an assistant in Ann Arbor. Small has one year of eligibility remaining.
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The 6-foot-3, 195-pounder led Oklahoma State with 15.1 points per game last season, adding 3.7 rebounds and a team-best 4.1 assists in 33 minutes. He shot 50.3 percent on twos (88-of-175), 37.4 percent on threes (61-of-163) and 86.6 percent on free throws (110-of-127) as the team’s point guard.
The South Bend, Ind., native ran 13.6 ball-screen possessions per game (including passes) a year ago, the second-highest amount in the Big 12. He generated 0.860 points per possession in those situations — slotting in the 47th percentile in the country — on an offense that ranked 129th nationally in adjusted efficiency, per Kenpom.
Small is an excellent jump shooter, posting a 57 effective field goal percentage on those attempts last season. He also made 41.2 percent of his runners and 48.7 percent of his shots at the rim.
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“Javon leads us because he has such a great amount of courage,” Boynton said after Small posted 19 points in a win over Cincinnati Feb. 21. “He believes he can make plays. Sometimes, I wish he wouldn’t take chances, but at the same time, you need that — you need to have supreme confidence to have success in this league, and I’ve told him from Day 1 I’m going to ride with him. It’s not going to always go well, but when it doesn’t, we can’t get discouraged.”
He suffered a season-ending leg injury in January of the 2022-23 season with East Carolina. He was averaging 15.8 points and 5.6 assists in 34.7 minutes per game but missed the final 15 contests. He shot 46.5 percent on twos and 33.3 percent on 108 three-point attempts that year.
The Michigan transfer target played in 16 games as a freshman at East Carolina in 2021-22. He totaled 32 points, 17 assists, 10 rebounds and 1 steal in 147 minutes (9.2 minutes per game). He shot just 10-of-38 from the field, including 5-of-23 from three-point distance.
An unranked recruit in the 2021 class, Small attended Chandler (Ariz.) Compass Prep.
