In the greatest offensive efficiency year in college basketball history, there are still some players who excel defensively. We’ve assembled the 20 best statistical defensive players returning. Many of them come from the same teams, like Houston, Iowa State, and Saint Mary’s, which makes sense since defense is often a collective effort where you’re only as strong as your weakest link.
Johni Broome and Clifford Omoruyi
I’m going to give more credit to the players who are more like lone wolves in these stats and don’t have as much help around them, such as Johni Broome or Clifford Omoruyi. For example, the players they played with all had a defensive rating nearly 10 points worse. That’s a good indication that they were anchoring and providing most of the defensive value, compared to more ensemble units like Houston and Iowa State, where there was less variance between the top defender and the 5th or 6th man, as they all had great defensive ratings and stats.
Tamin Lipsey
A center typically provides more value to a defense than a point guard because he’s around the rim and everything is in front of him as the last line of defense. The shots taken from farther out are more difficult. However, Tamin Lipsey is an exception at 6-1. Only Hassan Ward, a 16-minute-per-game backup, had a better defensive rating on Iowa State than Lipsey, which is pretty remarkable for a small guard. The 2.7 steals per game and the pressure he put on ball handlers made this possible. Still, I think he needs defensive talent behind him and wouldn’t be able to anchor a defense in the way Broome would, for example. There were players with great defensive ratings up and down Iowa State’s lineup especially in the post to clean up if a gamble for a steal didn’t result in one.
J’Wan Roberts and Ja’Vier Francis
There is strength in numbers, and there’s no doubt that Roberts and Francis help each other, but I do believe they could anchor their own defenses on other teams as well. Houston just has an embarrassment of riches in defenders every year, and much of that, in my opinion, is due to the style they play and what they manage to get away with physically. There are only so many fouls refs are willing to call, and they push the envelope, in my opinion, normalizing the physicality. However, relative to how offensive basketball is now, there’s no doubt they had one of the best defenses last year, and Francis, Roberts, and their backup Tugler were a big part of the reason why.
Hunter Dickinson
This will be one of the most controversial additions to the list, but here we go. Dickinson is a very good defender around the rim, and you can set your defense up to his strengths, as Kansas clearly has. He anchored the 20th best defense on KenPom last year while playing 32.2 minutes a game. You can’t have a defense that good if your center is bad, which seems to be a misconception. In fact, Dickinson was most of the reason why. The next closest defensive rating among the high-minute guys was 5 points worse. These are just objective facts. Dickinson also was the starting center on the 4th best defense in kenpom as well at Michigan, and had the 2nd highest defensive rating on that team.
