Kadary Richmond and Mitchell Saxen: Anatomy of a Missed Layup

Richmond and Saxen provide opportunity for all 30 NBA franchises to add uniquely talented NCAA super-senior prospects to their organization.

Kadary Richmond and Mitchell Saxen: Anatomy of a Missed Layup

The high-profile NCAA player to pro role player pipeline has seen thousands of variations at this point. Those who navigate decreasing on-ball scoring opportunities with an amplification of their ancillary skills allow for a more seamless translation to the NBA or any other high-level league. The groundbreaking offensive engine, predestined to exert processing akin to a supercomputer onto the hardwood, will rarely see disturbances in the hierarchy of offensive load, as to remove opportunities for these players would be to stifle genius.

On the flip side, there are players whose NCAA utility as an offensive initiator was similar enough to the transcendent quartet above, while lacking the talent to sustain the same offensive load as a pro. This deficit, along with a lack of ancillary skills, is a death wish for success in the NBA, as seen below.

Efficient play-finishers who never exhibit the ability to create for themselves or others can succeed at the professional level, but should be approached with caution. My Ben McLemore and Anthony Davis MythBuster pieces attack this concept fervently, crediting otherwise undistinguished handlers Marquis Teague and Naadir Tharpe for their contributions in playmaking load.

The Jalen Brunson/Collin Gillespie iterations of Villanova basketball provide another excellent example. After a decade of championship-less success at Nova, Jay Wright adopted an offensive system similar to that of James Harden, Trae Young, or Luka Doncic in the NBA, where a lead guard initiates most off-dribble shotmaking and playmaking, utilizing on-ball screens as the primary initial action. This leaves other players to make defensive and playfinishing contributions while crucially not turning the ball over in their virtually scripted offensive touches.

For NCAA teams, finding handlers capable of maintaining such a load is a rarity, and Wright found two of the best across six seasons. Interestingly, Joe Mihalich’s Hofstra maintained one of the best offenses in the nation by bballref’s ORTG calculations. BartTorvik’s estimation of Hofstra’s Adjusted Offensive Efficiency wasn’t as high, but still ranked within the top fifteen of mid-major designated teams.

Wright and Mihalich’s relationship as philosophical beacons of Northeast college basketball probably can’t be overstated, and their collaborations included the exchange of top coaching prospects Kyle Neptune and Joe Mihalich Jr. on their staffs. Maintaining such a high offensive output with a focus on low-assist, low-turnover within such close social proximity is likely no fluke or coincidence. Without the ability to obtain a single guard suited to handle scoring and playmaking duties, Mihalich halved obligations between Justin Wright-Foreman and Desire Buie, to the aforementioned success. Below, I present Villanova and Hofstra’s offensive distributions next to two other elite offenses over the same time period. Note the differences in how AST%, USG%, TO%, TS%, and 3PAr are clustered among 30+ player seasons over six years and an elevated understanding of how static offensive roles are at the college level (and how this would affect a prospect) should come with that.

This wins games and can be a beacon for elite offenses, as Nova proved, but we’re focused on NBA translation. Buie and Wright-Foreman, Hofstra's backcourt creators, combined for 45 NBA minutes and a handful of decent G-League seasons; clearly not the best proof of concept for the offensive style. Eleven Nova alumni have logged NBA minutes from this era (2016–2022), and four have unquestionably succeeded as frequent positive contributors. Unsurprisingly, only Brunson has been able to find any success in ball-handling capacities so far.

Collin Gillespie’s advocates worldwide may be preparing to join the club with a larger minute load next season.

Off-ball efficiency, like that displayed by Bridges, Hart, DiVincenzo, and even less successful pros like McLemore, always find NBA suitors, with varying levels of success, based on a multitude of factors best analyzed at another time.

I now ask you to enter a less-charted territory of prospect identification.

Every player on a basketball team does not have to provide scoring efficiency as an initiator or play finisher.

The prospects highlighted below don’t even offer the benefit of spacing the floor from behind the arc. Regardless, multiple success stories prevail both in the NBA and at the international level.

Players not included in the ‘NBA’ designation include notable G-League and international pros like Emanuel Miller, Sir’Dominic Pointer, 2024 Gran Canaria teammates Ethan Happ and Ben Lammers, as well as Lammers’ Georgia Tech predecessor Daniel Miller. Note the ‘sticky’ nature of current Phoenix Suns general manager Brian Gregory’s coaching tendencies that would allow for such inefficiency from his bigs, which I assume stemmed from heavy post-up volume.

Only three players of any merit meet the above qualifications this season. Mississippi State’s Cameron Matthews is a somewhat attractive prospect due to a combination of rebounding, defensive playmaking, and passing ability reminiscent of Herb Jones. Unfortunately, his offensive volume across more than 160 NCAA games places him as a negative usage outlier that leaves his NBA prospects suboptimal.

That leaves us with two of my favorite prospects in the 2025 NBA Draft class: Kadary Richmond and Mitchell Saxen.

August 2001-born Kadary Richmond enters the 2025 NBA Draft prospect pool after a five-year career as one of the premier lead two-way guards in college basketball, with his ability to sustain a substantial offensive load while maintaining a historic level of defensive playmaking providing an intriguing baseline for transitioning to an off-ball role as a professional.

There’s no need to bury the lede. I have to convince you that a 24-year-old rookie who posted a .1 3PAr (meaning 10% of his field goal attempts were threes) and shot 54% from the free-throw line in his age-23 NCAA season will be able to stay on the court as a guard/wing in the NBA. A phenomenon regarding non-shooting college stars should work in his favor as a pro, which can be concluded from the query below.

The most basic explanation is that wing/guard-sized players who were able to find this lofty individual level of success (6 BPM over at least a two-season sample) without the three-pointer as a weapon, while registering non-abhorrent shooting touch at the free throw line and the ability to self-create in the midrange via pull-up jumpers and floaters gives them leeway to contribute and improve their range in the meantime.

Of the eight pros shown, Burks, Leonard, Morris, and Williams have sustained league-average or better relative True Shooting rates across otherwise successful NBA careers. Green and McConnell are two of the most impactful poor shooters in the game, deep into their careers. Walkup and Colson have enjoyed massive success in the best non-NBA pro leagues in the world while grading out as average jumpshooters.

Outside of the lack of a consistent long-range jumpshot, Richmond was a very poor finisher for someone his size at the college level.

There are some success stories here, like Rozier, Dort, and Herb Jones, but this lack of Moreyball efficiency is clearly a rare, negative outlier trait for NBA-level prospects. But, I have already convinced the reader that Richmond’s shooting reaching approximate neutral impact is a given. As a finisher, Richmond finds himself in a much more precarious group.

Herb Jones is the ONLY NBA player whose non-small guard finishing has been anywhere this poor, and the difference in their heights/dunk rates indicates Jones’ difference in ability.

Why were Richmond’s layups hard?

Heavy on-ball utility almost strictly from inside the three-point line on shooting-deficient, low ball-movement rosters left little room for error on finishes in uncongested lanes.

Poor transition finishing, spearheaded by a weak dunk rate, left even more points at the rim in relatively easy circumstances.

Improvements at his advanced age and in a reduced scoring role (23.7 FGA/100 Possessions in 2024 down to 19.2 FGA in 2025) are promising for being a more efficient off-ball weapon in the NBA.

Going from the worst ‘big handler’ finishing season of relevance since 2010 to a below-average finishing season on par with Shai and Cooper Flagg, on one of the worst three-point shooting teams in the nation (logically providing him the poor spacing mentioned earlier), is a more than relevant improvement and proves further upside may be possible under better circumstances and lower load.

Richmond’s 2025 season has remained underrated. RJ Luis Jr. staked his claim as the ‘best’ player on coaching legend Rick Pitino’s St. John’s roster by averaging the highest points per game, and the media ran with this. Luis was named the Big East Conference Player of the Year, while being the third-most impactful player on his team, behind Richmond and Zuby Ejiofor.

Honestly, this wasn’t even close. Luis was more comparable to Wooga Poplar or Solo Ball last season than real Big East heavyweights like Ryan Kalkbrenner, Kam Jones, and his St. John’s teammates Richmond and Ejiofor. Nevertheless, Richmond dominated, leading the nation in D-PRPG! versus top-40 competition (min. 300 minutes played) while ranking t5 in AST:TO ratio and t7 in STL%, leaving his signature two-way impact on full display.

Richmond’s best stretch came across two months between January and March, where he led St. John’s through an ultra-competitive conference run, posting a 13 Box Plus-Minus, ranking third in the nation over the period behind lottery picks Cooper Flagg and Collin Murray-Boyles.

In totality, Richmond completed one of the best two-way seasons by a guard in recent NCAA history, as a catalyst of one of the best teams in the nation, and has picked up little traction as a draft prospect.

A deserved Big East Player of the Year award, and the accompanying national recognition and awards, would have been massive for this traction, and is further proof of the relevance of using data-driven logic in award voting processes. 23-year-old First-team All-American and SEC Player of the Year Dalton Knecht played a much less versatile season in 2024, without a prior season that held a candle to even Richmond’s freshman year, and was rewarded with a first-round pick’s salary and season-long courtside seats at Crypto.com Arena.

Before his athletic and physical measurements from the 2025 G-League Invite Combine were released, I predicted Richmond’s wingspan would be substantial, while his vertical could be underwhelming. These hypotheses were based on the ability to accumulate stocks and generate rim attempts with as weak of a dunk rate as his. Of 352 players in his height band (6'4 to 6'6), Richmond graded out worse than my expectations. 31st percentile in Max Vertical and 18th percentile in winsgspan/height ratio places him in a precarious anthro cluster.

Most of the notable players here made their pro careers based on shooting threes at a high volume and clip, and Richmond probably won’t do that. Delon Wright’s statistical and physical profile have continued to mirror Richmond’s throughout the piece.

Wright was simply a better player and prospect, but the ‘benefit’ of not playing a Division 1 NCAA game until his age-21 season (opting for two seasons at community college out of high school) and not having developmental underclassmen seasons tanking his career stats doesn’t go without mention. Richmond’s per40 stats in his final two seasons, next to Wright’s, make for a better and more fair comparison. As seen below, outside of scoring efficiency (which is of substantial importance), Richmond was as good or betternthan Wright at most aspects of the game.

Aside from on-court output, I believe Richmond has a significant advantage over Wright, who has been consistently underrated and undervalued across his career, exhibited by substantial underlying impact.

At the same draft age, Delon Wright weighed in at 182 pounds, giving Richmond a 24-pound difference. Other notable players with similar combine measurement HT/WT ratios as Wright’s .42 include 2025 Thunder teammates Alex Caruso, Isaiah Joe, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Maynor, former Thunder draft picks Jeremy Lamb, Eric Maynor, and Tre Mann, along with De’Aaron Fox, Zach Lavine, and Jamal Crawford. There’s an entire article to write at a later date about weight and production in specific areas, and maybe more specifically Sam Presti’s fascination with skinny kings.

Of the nearly 2,800 players in @ MarkC_NBA’s draft combine app from between 2000–2023, .42 places all of the listed players in the 7th percentile or lower. A post from Ziye Wang titled “Do NBA Draft Combine Metrics Predict NBA Success?” indicates height/weight ratio to be possibly relevant in predicting defensive success (D-LEBRON) based on 924 individual seasons of data. With this, between otherwise similarly sized, skilled, and aged players as Richmond and Wright, the heavier prospect should be the better defensive pro.

In total, Richmond is a prospect that could define the founding chapter of NCAA super seniors making their transition to the NBA, after developing a uniquely dominant profile versus the highest-level of non-professional basketball in the world at the same age most of their peers are toiling away at the end of NBA benches or in disjointed G-League assignments. With the size of a wing and outlier two-way feel and processing skills, Richmond should utilize never-before-seen off-ball versatility and much-improved teammate shooting/scoring gravity to finish at a higher rate versus slanted defenses, while continuing to generate stocks and motivate transition offense as a defender.

Across the country, few mid-major franchises have rivaled the sustained excellence of Randy Bennett’s Saint Mary Gaels over the past twenty seasons. For most of this time, the team would ravage the West Coast Conference with slow-paced efficiency and accurate outside shooting as their template. A lineage of standout guards, including Patty Mills, Mickey McConnell, Matthew Dellavedova, Emmett Naar, and Jordan Ford, carried offensive loads while bigs like Jock Landale, Omar Samhan, and Brad Waldow crashed the glass and finished at the rim. Defense was usually an afterthought, with only one top-25 Adjusted Defensive Efficiency season posted in 2017.

This offense-first team meta was reciprocated in player output. Of the 486 seasons in the BartTorvik database posting a PORPAGATU! ≥ 4.75 and a Def. PRPG! ≤ 4, representing offensive performance that have ranked t40 and in the nation in the 2025 season and defensive performance that would rank comfortably outside of the t80, Saint Mary’s players accounted for nine. This tied with BYU and a familiar offensive vessel, Villanova.

Saint Mary’s stopped winning primarily with offense in 2021 and haven’t particularly looked back. While there’s not one player to assign this success to, former pitching prospect Mitchell Saxen (Sept. 5th, 2001) has been the most valuable on a cumulative basis.

Remember just a few paragraphs ago when Kadary Richmond led the NCAA in DPRPG versus t80 opponents during the 2025 season? Saxen ranked fourth.

As the reader, you may now further decide how relevant and useful DPRPG! versus the top ≈25 percent of NCAA competition. Using very light AST:TO and dunk filters to filter out non-athletes and poor processors, one finds a handful of the best prospects in recent times, as well as a trio of per-minute All-Stars in Jaylin Williams, Baylor Scheierman, and Trayce Jackson-Davis.

This standard of defensive anchoring puts Saxen into rather lofty company, especially when accounting for him being one of the best offensive rebounders in the nation.

A textbook detractor of alternatively talented basketball players would have a relatively simple script to exile Saxen from the NBA ecosystem: the 23-year-old has virtually maxed out what a below-the-rim big post-hub big that left *this* many points at the free-throw line can do on offense at the NCAA level. Swift, sharp improvements in free-throw accuracy will be the difference between a chance at an NBA career and playing professionally otherwise for the Seattle native.

I tracked a select group of poor free throw shooting college bigs, and their career outcomes at the line to provide potential outlooks for Saxen, using Free Throw % ≤ 0.65; FT att. ≥ 400; 3P att. ≤ 25; and sorting by BPM as a relevant dataset. Results show that career free-throw improvements increase by otherwise talented professional players does occur, likely out of the same necessity I’ve described in Saxen’s case.

Saxen’s offensive limitations were not reserved to the free-throw line. There’s little reason to expect him to shoot with any range as a pro, and his finishing is apparently subpar for his non-shooting NCAA counterparts, posting the 94th-ranked effective field goal percentage out of 166 players with at least 550 rim attempts and less than 50 three-point attempts.

Why were Saxen’s layups hard?

An especially poor final season in regards to finishing (20th in EFG among 23 players with 200+ rim attempts and 20 or less threes attempted), while maintaining a massive post-up and offensive rebounding load aided in tanking his career stats. In prior seasons, Saxen was much more efficient in post-up and inside-out plays, indicating better perimeter playfinishers capitalizing on his rim gravity. Being as elite an offensive rebounder as Saxen and not returning very high efficiency on the playtype leads me to believe his totals likely included an above-average z-bound frequency, this being the controversial skill exhibited by Andre Drummond, Nikola Jokic, Moses Malone, and the apparently titular Zach Randolph, where rebounding one’s rim misses increases OREB volume and decreases rim%.

What may go understated is just how frequently Saxen was able to attempt a shot directly at the rim, and the way his methods diverge from similarly rim-dependent prospects. In my Shot Diet Sheet, he ranks twelfth among nearly 1,200 prospects in rim rate, ahead of notable finishers like Jaxson Hayes, Zion Williamson, Mark Williams, Jakob Poeltl, and 2024 WCC conference mate Johnathan Mogbo. Where he differs from these rim extraordinaries is that he did this with one of the lowest dunk rates and dunks per rim attempt rates in the dataset.

I do not believe this stylistic trait should be used to penalize Saxen’s pro outlook, relative to other points utilized in this analysis. More than anything, this is a proxy for his missing vertical testing, by virtue of not being invited to the G-League or NBA Draft Combines. It is true that similar extremely vertically weak prospects do not have the best NBA track record, but Saxen is the tallest, best defender of the small sample.

Success stories like Domantas Sabonis and Jakob Poeltl share elevated defensive impact and height from prospects like Lofton and Evbuomwan. Appreciating the value in a big that utilizes lateral-spacial skills on both ends, as Saxen’s 2 STL% entails, will allow a team to add a distinctly skilled big to their rotation.

Saxen and Richmond’s advanced ages, combined with athletic questions and some skill deficits, have left them almost entirely overlooked in NBA Draft discourse. Similar seasons from underclassmen have led to consistent NBA interest with premium draft capital.

I hope I have proven this logic is incorrect, but I also believe there is another related factor to account for. In short, there are already players in the NBA, at similar positions, who are the same age as the prospects in question. I will conclude this analysis by presenting NBA players born in 2001, like Richmond and Saxen, and allowing the reader to decipher whether the exhibition of outlier traits at advanced ages versus NCAA competition is more or less valuable than a varying diet of inconsistent NBA minutes and G-League assignments. Generally speaking, I side with the longer-tenured college stars in this matter, proven by this document’s lofty word count dedicated to a duo of probable undrafted free agents.

Minutes played is an underrated stat in this way; by being on the court, one of five players intrinsically tasked to best the five across from them, value and talent are exhibited or exposed in a recorded pattern. Rarely are box score for scrimmages made public, and these inter-squad matchups do not come with the intensity of a game where the record contributes to standings and the ability to play in a post-season setting. Simply being on the court is valuable to a degree, and Richmond and Saxen have been key contributors. Compare that to their bench warming contemporaries as a concluding exercise. I appreciate your time and hope that the concepts and prospect analysis in this essay can aid your though processes in the future.

Nile!