Casey Morsell probably never foresaw his freshman year of college playing out this way. Nothing in his high school or AAU career could have prepared him for it. That he handled it with the grace and positivity with which he did bodes well for his future. Believe you me, Casey Morsell is way too talented and way too driven for it all to end up this way.

There is no way to avoid it: Casey’s first year of college basketball was an apprenticeship in bricklaying. He’s ready to build serpentine walls after shooting 38% from 2-point range and 17.6% from the arc – less than half what he shot in high school. His 71.0 ORtg was worst on the team. He had the dubious distinction of being one of the worst three-point shooters in Division I basketball.

Morsell had a couple of good games: driving the Hoos to a win over Arizona State with 19 points, 10 big points in a win over Navy, and 10 points including 2-2 from three and 3 steals at North Carolina. He had his moments, and he earned praise as a defender, but it was all overshadowed by the terrible shooting and frequent bad decisions on offense. A starter at the season’s commencement, he dropped to the bottom of the rotation by the end. A starter who played 24 or more minutes in each of the first 9 games, Casey played 20 or more minutes only 9 of the next 21 games, and only saw 30 minutes of action in the last three combined.

Most freshmen come into Tony Bennett’s system and learn from the bottom up. Very few start, and most of the ones who start are only expected to be supporting players. They get to learn, figure things out, grow into their roles. Casey didn’t have that luxury. When Kyle Guy followed De’Andre Hunter and Ty Jerome to the NBA he took away Tony Bennett’s last veteran backcourt option. Casey had to step into a feature role, and he was perhaps less suited to making that direct transition in Tony Bennett’s system than most. Why? Because of his conscience.

“I would be standing there trying to figure out, Is it too early to shoot? Is somebody else open? Is this read open? Is this open?,” Casey told The Athletic’s Eamonn Brennan this summer. “I was just overthinking everything. Before I would just go out there and just play, and I really wouldn’t think as much. Now it’s like, OK, let’s move the ball, let’s get everything going, OK, now let’s get a shot up, let’s think – like just trying to think through all of it, make the perfect play, be perfect. It resulted in a lot of missed shots and a lot of missed opportunities.”

What it didn’t result in, interestingly enough, was UVA doing any worse. For the season, Virginia had a Net Efficiency of 0.08 PPP and 1.09 scoring ratio with Casey in the lineup, and a NEff of 0.07 PPP and scoring ratio of 1.1 without him. What the Hoos lost on the offensive end with Casey they made up on the defensive end – which might explain why Bennett stayed with him as long as he did. In the end, Tomas Woldetensae found his shot and became a strong defender in his own right, and Kody Stattmann found his shot and also became a good defender. That put Casey behind Tomas as the starter and Kody as the first sub.

Casey is looking to have a much better sophomore season.

What He Brings

The day will come when Casey Morsell is a great team leader. His intangibles will serve him and the team well in that role. However, as a sophomore on Kihei Clark’s team, leadership is not yet Casey’s job. What he does bring is an example to the freshmen of how to prepare and a hand on the shoulder when they struggle. “Brother, I’ve been there. Keep your head up.”

On the court, what Casey “brings” is still visible in theoretical form or based on his high school and AAU career, because it’s hard to find in his college statistics or video. There are flashes: a baseline drive here, a defensive stop there, a pull-up jumper, a timely three from the corner. It’s just impossible to pore through his statistics and find anything that he did well consistently.

Theoretically, Casey brings a varied offensive game and lockdown defense. With his ability to spread out and his intense focus on defense, we all saw the potential to be the next Malcolm Brogdon (which probably didn’t help). We saw flashes of that last year, though his Synergy numbers on Isolation and Pick & Roll Ball Handler defense were not good – standard Synergy defensive stats disclaimer applies. In high school and AAU Casey was a good shooter who could hit any kind of shot whether off the pass or the dribble. He was strong going to the rack. No moment was too big for him. He was a good free throw shooter – which he DID bring to college.

Based on those flashes we saw, you have to think that if Casey can get out of his own head, he should bring all those things to the Hoos. If his head is right, he is a player who can create his own shot. Before the season, I saw him as Virginia’s best hope for a guy who could get up good shots late in the clock. As it turns out, he probably was, because when it fell to Kihei Clark, it didn’t go well. With Jabri Abdur-Rahim and Reece Beekman joining the squad, help is on its way.

What I Would Like to See More

You might think I am going to say “made shots” here, but I’m going to cross you up. The first thing I would like to see more from Casey is rebounding. With guards in the Virginia system, you look at defensive rebounding. Guards are not supposed to go to the offensive boards, but they are expected to come back for defensive rebounds. It’s one of the imperatives of the Bennett philosophy. Casey had the lowest defensive rebounding percentage (DR%) on the team at 7.8%. For a player whose calling card is supposed to be defense, Morsell should do better. By point of comparison, Brogdon had a DR% of 13.3 in 2016.

The next thing I would like to see more of is Casey at the free throw line. For a player who is supposed to be good at going strong to the basket, an 8.4 free throw rate (FTr) is absurdly low. Casey took 166 shots from the floor and only 14 free throws. When you are an 85.7% free throw shooter, getting to the line is a weapon. Even for a team like Virginia where getting to the line is a struggle, 8.4% is very low.

Finally, I would like to see improved ball handling. Casey’s handle was a little rough for a guard, and his assist rate of 7.6 was low. His turnover rate of 15.9 was understandable for a first-year and well within line of other first-year Cavalier guards, but overall, this is an area that Casey can improve.

What I Would Like to See Less

Ok, you’ve waited long enough. I want to see fewer missed shots. I prefer to put it this way because I think Casey shot too much last year until very late in the season. I understand it, and I don’t blame him for it, but I saw a lot of bad decisions on offense. As I watched and broke down video, the amount of bad decisions I recognized just mounted. Bad shots taken, good shots passed up, dribbling into trouble, dribbling into a worse shot than the one he passed up, teammates missed, not going to the basket when a lane was there, reading a screen wrong. Again, he was a freshman in a complex system who was doing the best he could, so no judgment here, but being supportive does not mean not pointing out what is objectively visible. Casey made a ton of bad decisions and had Bennett had ANY option, Casey should have been on the bench learning by watching.

This one might appear to contradict the last point, but I want to see less thinking out there. Casey recognizes it, too. When Brennan asked him what he was most focused on in his off-season training, Morsell replied, “Making plays without thinking. Eliminating thinking from my game.” Getting to a point where you play “without thinking” is a long process that involves mostly experience, but it also involves repetition in practice, watching film, introspection and reflection, and asking questions. It’s something that develops over time. It also requires the ability to forgive yourself and put errors out of your mind immediately.

Expected Role

This is going to start sounding like a broken record. I said it with Tomas, I said it with Kody, and it’s true for Casey: It is very difficult to forecast a role for Casey because there is so much competition and it depends as much on how other players develop as on how he develops. But knowing Tony Bennett and the history of his players’ development, you can forecast that Casey will get better, will have an advantage over the freshmen due to his experience, and will have an advantage because of his defensive prowess. If I had to project a day one starting lineup today, Casey would be in it.

That said, if his offensive numbers don’t show some serious social mobility early this season, he could see his role dwindle quickly. There’s too much competition to keep a guy on the floor who cannot put the ball in the basket at a decent rate and compounds that by making mistakes.

Tomas, Casey and one of the freshmen will likely be the top three perimeter players with Kihei. At this point, given recent chatter, Beekman is probably the favorite. I expect Casey to start in November and be part of the 8-man rotation for the season, because I expect him to make big improvements like so many Bennett guards before him.

Final Analysis

Casey remains upbeat. “There are going to be a lot more threats from the perimeter. I am a lot more comfortable with the ball in my hands. We’re going to figure it out.” There’s always a place in the lineup for the player Casey Morsell is supposed to be, but perhaps we all underestimated – including Casey – how difficult it would be to develop into that kind of player. The kind of player Casey is supposed to be, what he was pre-college, is a player who can do everything, who can make plays of any type anywhere on the floor at any point in the game. One does not step into a new situation and master everything right away. Think about it that way and you can see how it would have been better for Casey to sit behind a Kyle Guy for a year and be called upon to come into games for short stretches asked to do one thing.

In the end, though, as with Kihei Clark who was asked to do EVERYTHING for Virginia last year, going through those struggles can make Casey a better player. He’s conscientious, he works hard, he’s humble, he listens – he has every quality and does everything that leads you to expect growth and improvement. If that very conscientiousness doesn’t undo him. I can say from experience that it is very difficult to turn the mind off, to stop the bullet train of thoughts. It’s hard to see from outside, but from inside it’s very real, and it’s Casey’s biggest challenge. Fortunately, he has a coach and is part of a culture that is encouraging and supportive.

Maybe the increased options the coaches have will work in Casey’s favor. He can be asked to do a limited number of things because other guys can do the other things. Bennett can rely on him for the things he is strongest at, and let him build on those. Sometimes a step back is the best way to move forward.