The college basketball season is one week into February, and the race to see who will be the freshman of the year in college hoops is heating up. Among the best freshmen in the country, which ones have the best chance of leading their team to the national championship? Let\u2019s look at the freshmen having the best seasons in the country:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jabari Smith, Auburn Tigers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The freshman who will probably go first in the 2022 NBA draft is not Chet Holmgren, despite his brilliance for Gonzaga; it\u2019s Jabari Smith. If you have watched Auburn play, you can see why. Smith might not make the game seem as easy to play as Holmgren does, but Smith makes the high-degree-of-difficulty plays which mark a future elite pro in the making. Smith has a fadeaway 17-foot jump shot which is extremely difficult to block. Smith is able to shoot over the top of defenders and \u2013 with his long arms \u2013 protect the ball so that defenders cannot get on his shooting hand quickly enough to deter him. That same length for Smith makes him an elite defensive player and a quality rebounder. He adds so many dimensions to this Auburn team and is a core reason the Tigers are going to get a No. 1 seed in the upcoming NCAA Tournament. Smith will be hard to ignore for the team which picks first in the NBA draft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chet Holmgren, Gonzaga Bulldogs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Gonzaga offense is exploding, and Holmgren is at the heart of it. Holmgren\u2019s smooth handles, fluid movements, high basketball IQ, and high-burst quickness all make him a dazzling and devastating player. Though not as physically developed as Jabari Smith (which might be the main reason Smith goes first in the draft), Holmgren\u2019s body is going to fill out more. He is going to get stronger. He is going to get more powerful. When that happens, watch out. He already understands the game extremely well and has steadily become a more consistent player while making his Gonzaga teammates increasingly better. That consistent improvement shows why Holmgren is going to be a can\u2019t-miss prospect, and it\u2019s also why Gonzaga is going to be extremely hard to beat when March Madness rolls around, and that\u2019s just over a month away, with the NCAA Tournament beginning the middle of March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paolo Banchero, Duke Blue Devils<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The strength of Banchero is his calling card. Banchero and Duke defeated Holmgren and Gonzaga earlier in the season. Banchero was the best player on the floor in that game, a huge reason why NBA scouts are in love with his upside and why he\u2019s still likely to be a top-five pick in the upcoming draft. The only concern for Banchero is that the ACC has not tested him enough this season. Still, he has an extremely bright future ahead of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n TyTy Washington, Kentucky Wildcats<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Kentucky Wildcats missed TyTy Washington in multiple losses this season. When Washington is on the floor, UK often looks like the best team in the country. UK lost to Auburn when Washington got hurt. If he had stayed on the floor for that game, Kentucky probably would have won. That expresses how good and how valuable Washington is to Kentucky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The college basketball season is one week into February, and the race to see who will be the freshman of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":16865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaab"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21414,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21412\/revisions\/21414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}