Will Tipton’s X-Men
A look at some of college basketball’s most crucial players for the best teams in the country in the tournament.
March has arrived. The best time of the year. The college basketball regular season, along with conference championships have come to a close, and you can almost hear the classic March Madness theme song if you close your eyes hard enough.
As four months of college basketball comes to a close, there are teams that have pulled away from the rest of the pack when it comes to having a real shot at holding up that national championship trophy in San Antonio. With teams like Auburn, Duke, Houston, and Florida, there are obvious candidates for guys who, in most viewers' eyes, are the guys to think are going to be the ones leading their team to the promised land. Florida point guard Walter Clayton Jr., Auburn center Johni Broome, Duke forward Cooper Flagg, and Houston guard LJ Cryer. These guys have time and time again put up big numbers and been the driving forces behind many big wins for these teams all year.
But college basketball is a fickle thing. You can have all the momentum in the world, all the right pieces, a historical regular season run, and it can all come crashing down in the first round against a 16 seed that has a game of their lifetime. You can’t rely on just one guy to deliver for a team every game and expect greatness each time a player touches the court. It requires supplemental players around a team's star, guys who can get a bucket or a key rebound when the going gets tough. This is the true time of year for the witching hour, where wins become losses, and losses turn into wins.
That’s why we are going to be highlighting the X-Factors on the previously mentioned teams with players that are going to be household names in just mere days, and the guys that if they make it as far as I think, are going to be a key reason why.
Auburn G Tahaad Pettiford
24-25 Season Stats: 11.0 PPG, 2.9 APG, 2.1 RPG, 41.8 FG%, 37.6 3P%
I was a massive fan of Rob Dillingham last year at Kentucky, and have always been partial to the undersized explosive ball handler archetype. The freshman sensation for the Tigers fits that mold to an absolute T. The former five-star freshman has been a lightning rod off the bench for the Tigers all season, and provides instant offense whenever he steps on the floor.
There is just such a beauty watching him handle the rock, with a stepback that can create an ocean of space, and a game reminiscent of Kyrie Irving if you just squint at the TV screen close enough. A recent example was when the Tigers went on the road to take on the Kentucky Wildcats. They hadn’t won at Rupp Arena since Ronald Reagan was in office. The National Player of the Year front-runner Johni Broome was held in check all game, posting nine points and six rebounds, his lowest combined P+R total since…January 11th. So damn, this must have been a close game right?
Oh wait, Auburn won by sixteen and was up by so much that ABC cut out the game late in the second half (technical difficulties but let’s run with this agenda). Well, Tahaad Pettiford and teammate Miles Kelly combined for 51 points, and proceeded to drill shot after shot over the helpless Kentucky defense all game.
Tahaad specifically had 21 points, shot 60% from the field and lived at the line, going 8-9 at the charity stripe. Tahaad offers something that makes him so special, and that is the threat of an NBA-caliber athlete playing off the bench, plus a skill set that is towards the top of the scouting report while he doesn’t even check into the game until the 15:00-16:00 minute mark in a half. On the flip side, in Auburn’s most recent game against the Tennessee Volunteers in the SEC tournament semifinal game, the Auburn Tigers fell to Tennessee 70-65. Tahaad’s statline?
A big, fat, goose-egg.
Going 0-8 from the field was the deciding factor in this game, and Tahaad will tote a big load going forward into the tournament. Auburn has looked remarkably…human lately, in all honesty. That’s compared to November to late February, when the Auburn Tigers looked like an unstoppable juggernaut. On the basketball analytics site, “EvanMiya”, they have Tahaad’s estimated offensive value metric ranked 3rd on the team, behind NPOTY contender Johni Broome and Chad Baker-Mazara.
In Auburn’s most recent stretch of losses, they look lost at times on offense, and lack a true shot creator in the starting lineup outside of Baker-Mazara. I believe truly in my heart, that for Auburn to live up to their potential and make a Final Four/National Championship run, they need Tahaad Pettiford to be on his A-game. Otherwise, this loaded Auburn squad with size in the frontcourt, depth, experience, (heavy on the experience, these dudes are so old), are going to be taking an earlier-than-expected shower.
Florida F Alex Condon
24-25 Season Stats: 11.1 PPG, 7.9 RPG, 2.2 APG, 50.2 FG%, 32.7 3P%
I love the Florida Gators. They play with such tempo and they have multiple ball handlers in Walter Clayton Jr., Alijah Martin, and Will Richard. The Gators have multiple bodies in the interior along with their trio of talented guards that will do all of the dirty work they asked to do. They crash the boards with gusto, set bruising picks, and defend the interior like it’s their lunch money. There is no one more important in this facet of the game for the Gators then their Aussie forward Alex Condon.
He provides something in the Florida frontcourt that the other members can’t provide and that is undoubtedly his versatility. The Gators involve Condon in so many of their actions on the perimeter, and they are comfortable having the ball in his hands as an initiator in a certain set. This shows up in the amount of dribble handoffs he flips to a Gator guard, or getting the ball on the perimeter and attempting to find a cutter. He is the chief interior option for the Gators, and on the other side of the ball, he is an absolute force in the paint.
Averaging over a block per game, Condon excels at contesting shots without drawing fouls and hurting his team. Looking at the tournament field, you rarely see a two-way presence like Condon that provides such a two way impact without needing the ball in his hands and carrying a heavy usage rate. Condon ranks 2nd on the Gators in total box plus/minus, and in my eyes, is the most important factor for the Gators heading into March Madness.
This makes it all the more important when you look back at the Gators in SEC play, and Condon would…disappear at times in all honesty. Numbers don’t lie, and when Alex Condon scores in double figures, the Florida Gators are a whopping 17-0. Condon doesn’t need the ball in his hands like I said previously, but he should be asserting his physicality far more than he does and demanding post touches. This Gators bunch operates at a completely different level when Condon is impacting the game on the boards and in the interior.
The Gators are on an absolute heater heading into March, beating Alabama and Tennessee in back-to-back days in the SEC tournament. But, this is March, where national championship dreams die and Cinderella reigns supreme. The Gators need their X-Factor to be the two way force he has shown to be in the 2025 NCAA Tournament.
Houston G Milos Uzan
24-25 Season Stats: 11.5 PPG, 4.3 APG, 3.0 RPG, 46.1 FG%, 42.6 3P%
Is this the year Kelvin Sampson claims his elusive national championship? The “Coogs” have received terrible luck every season it seems. Last year, it was Jamal Shead going down against Duke in the Sweet 16. The previous year they ran into a red-hot Miami team in the Sweet 16, and the year prior, lost dynamic guards Marcus Sasser and Tramon Mark for the year before the calendar turned into the new year. Now, versatile forward J’Wan Roberts is hobbled with an ankle injury heading into the Big Dance.
Yikes.
So who’s going to step it up for the Houston Cougars, who ran roughshod over the Big 12 on their way to their second 1st-place finish and 1 seed in the tournament in their 2nd year in the conference? That guy is Milos Uzan.
It is an incredibly tough task to live up to the legacy of such a legendary player for this Houston program, but Uzan has provided a steady presence all year trying to fill the shoes of Jamal Shead. The Oklahoma transfer has put up career numbers across the board, and provides offensive firepower on a squad that relies so heavily on the back of LJ Cryer on the offensive side of the floor. Uzan operates as a steady hand in the backcourt, able to probe out the defense and can get to his shot whenever he wants. In Houston’s most recent Big 12 Championship game win over Arizona, he lit up the Wildcats to a tune of 25 points, and nailed clutch after clutch bucket down the stretch of the game. That isn’t even his most definable trait for this team, and that is his vision.
The lead guard dwarfs anyone else on this Cougars team in assist rate, with a 26.5% mark that truly reflects how important he is on the team as the lead ball handler. LJ Cryer gets a majority of the praise for propelling the offense for good reason. If you looked up a bucket in the dictionary, you would see a picture of Cryer. But you can’t run iso ball for 40 straight minutes. Getting to sets and offensive actions are so crucial in March to get easy buckets when the opposing team is delivering a kill shot (a run of 10 points unanswered), and Uzan is the smooth fearless operator any team would be envious to have.
This Cougars team has the chance to do something special, and they have the goods to deliver. They have LJ Cryer, sharpshooter Emmanuel Sharp, and Filthy and McNasty in the interior with J’Wan Roberts and Javier Francis. The X-Factor Milos Uzan will be the deciding factor in the future of this Houston bunch in March, and just look at that fateful Sweet 16 game against Duke last year. Jamal was the heartbeat of the team, and when you remove the heart, the team flatlines. Milos is this team's heart, and he has got to keep on beating.
Duke F Isaiah Evans
24-25 Season Stats: 7.6 PPG, 0.6 APG, 1.2 RPG, 44.6 FG%, 43.9% 3P%
To the casual viewer, these per-game numbers don’t look particularly crucial to a team’s success, but the guy his teammates affectionately call “Slim” is the Uno wild card of this group of X-Men. Isaiah Evans entered this season as almost the odd man out in the Duke rotation until he was inserted into the Auburn game at Cameron Indoor off the bench and proceeded to drill 6 THREES. Let’s repeat that again, a guy who hadn’t received a single minute in previous games against Kentucky, Arizona, and Kansas, put up 18 points ice cold off the bench against the #1 team in the country en route to a win. This guy is as ice cold in the veins as it comes. After every bucket he drilled, he talked his shit and let them know, they can’t guard him.
Cooper Flagg might not be 100% after his ankle injury against Wake Forest in the ACC tournament, and the vaunted Blue Devils are all going to have to step it up if his absence extends into the first round. There isn’t a guy that comes to mind more than Slim for a person who can etch his name into hallowed ground as a March Madness legend for the Dukies.
For Evans to post the 2nd-highest offensive box plus/minus rating on the Blue Devils, all while coming off the bench, points to his impact as an instant offense generator the moment he steps onto the floor. There is nowhere on the floor Evans can’t spot up from, and it is truly a sight to see this dude square up to the hoop 30-plus feet away from the basket, and effortlessly get bucket after bucket.
He is a guy you have to account for every moment he is on the court, and that just opens up the offense to the cast of stars Jon Scheyer has assembled this year in Durham. By no means is Isaiah a distributor, or a board crasher, or a defensive stopper. But when the going gets tough in a Sweet 16 game, and you can’t run a set to save your life, it helps to have a guy to get the ball to and just say: “get the fuck out of the way.”
It is a luxury for the Blue Devils to bring him off the bench, and his 61 made threes on a 44% clip reflect his nature: a pure sniper.
Jack Gohlke, Buddy Boeheim, and Andrew Funk are just some of the names in mind I have for the archetype Evans follows, and it is foreseeable for him to make the same type of impact in March as legends of years past.
