2015-16 Stats: 16.3 PPG, 3.5 RPG, 2.5 APG, 38.3% 3PT, 1.5 TOPG, 115.4 O-Rating, 0.162 WS/40
2016-17 Stats: 13.1 PPG, 3.1 RPG, 2.4 APG, 37.1% 3PT, 2.0 TOPG, 104.8 O-Rating, 0.117 WS/40
Nick Emery’s transition from one of the guys to The Guy didn’t quite go according to plan.
Surrounded by Kyle Collinsworth, Chase Fischer and Zac Seljaas, Emery was a star as a freshman. (When he wasn’t suspended for sucker punching opponents, anyway.) He ranked second on the team in scoring while attempting nearly 17 shots per 40 minutes.
Last year, though, he was only the third-highest scorer for the Cougars, thanks in large part to a 15.4 percent decrease in field-goal attempts per 40 minutes. Emery was clearly the most noteworthy returning player from the 2015-16 roster, but he had to share the spotlight with freshmen TJ Haws and Yoeli Childs, transfer Elijah Bryant and low-post machine Eric Mika, who returned from his LDS mission in more dominant form.
But the problem wasn’t the teammates. Emery just had no consistency from one night to the next. This was Emery’s chronological scoring log over BYU’s final 10 games: 2, 19, 4, 26, 4, 16, 9, 21, 0, 24. No idea how one would confirm this, but that has got to be one of the most sporadic six-week stretches in basketball history.
He scored at least 20 points on eight separate occasions, including a 37-point explosion in a shocking November loss to Utah Valley. However, he never pieced together multiple such performances and was held to five points or fewer six times.
This was a far cry from what he did as a freshman, when he scored in double figures in each of the final 13 games of that season, including back-to-back 30-point performances in mid-February. In fact, he scored at least 10 points in all but four games in 2015-16. He wasn’t exactly a metronome, but the line graph of his freshman-year scoring has significantly less drastic peaks and valleys than its sophomore counterpart.
Emery clearly still has the skill to score in bunches, and the assumption here is that his effort and output will return to a more consistent level as a junior.
Nick Emery, BYU