Incoming Winthrop freshmen should help ease sting of losing Moore, Smith to graduation

Winthrop men’s basketball graduates a seasoned and talented backcourt duo this May, but coach Pat Kelsey is bringing in two freshmen who he hopes can contribute to the program immediately.

Adding Bjorn Broman and Adam Pickett should lessen the sting of losing Keon Moore, who set the school record for most threes in a season this year, and Andre Smith, a 1,000-point scorer and devout believer in Kelsey’s system.

Broman, from Duluth, Minn., was the leading high school basketball scorer in the country the last two seasons according to MaxPreps and is a finalist for his state’s Mr. Basketball award. He averaged close to 50 points per game for Lakeview Academy this season, a mark that makes Pickett’s impressive average of 32 points per game for Stuart Hall School in Staunton, Va., look almost pitiful.

“Obviously they’re both wired to score,” Kelsey said last week.

Kelsey tagged Broman as more of a true point guard than Pickett, who he called a combo guard who can handle the ball or play on the wing. But specific guard duties at Winthrop aren’t usually assigned to just one player.

“One of the things that allowed me to encourage (Pickett) to look at Winthrop is that, with the system they run, it doesn’t really matter,” said Sean Crocker, who coached Pickett at Stuart Hall the last two years. “Any of the two or three that are out there get the ball and go and they’re looking to push and attack. That is Adam’s strength.”

Pickett, who had offers from Longwood, Radford and VMI, among others, made 268 field goals this season; only 14 were from 3-point range. In 12 of the 22 games he played, the 6-foot-1 guard attempted double-digit free throws, including a 20-for-25 effort against Fishburne Military Academy in early January, a game in which he scored 53 points. Pickett shot 71 percent from the free-throw line, can finish at the rim with both hands, and dunks with ease off the dribble thanks in part to a 6-foot-7 wingspan.

“Adam is a violent driver,” said Kelsey. “I don’t know at his position and his size if there is a better finisher at the rim I’ve seen that will play in this league in the next couple of years.”

That propensity to attack the rim should pair well with Broman’s ability to shoot. Broman put up eye-opening scoring numbers the last three years in high school, but the Minnesotan is naturally more of a distributor for his teammates, a trait he showcased during the summer while playing AAU with the Howard Pulley Panthers out of Minneapolis.

Broman started 12 of 22 games for the team during last year’s Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL), a summer-long competition for top AAU programs. The 6-foot, boyish-faced guard averaged close to seven points and four assists per game, dishing out 84 assists with just 26 turnovers for a squad that included prospects committed to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Marquette.

“He was a great point guard, he could handle the ball, had a high basketball I.Q., and he can shoot the lights out,” said Rene Pulley, founder of Howard Pulley AAU. “And he’s tough. He’s not the fastest and his shorts are always so long, it looks like doesn’t have any legs. He’s really a way better player than he looks.”

As Pulley said, this is a world where it helps an athlete get recruited if he/she looks like a good player. Broman doesn’t necessarily look like a stud at first glance, but his performances with Howard Pulley against high-level EYBL competition paint a clearer picture of what he can do at Winthrop next season and beyond.

“He was making shots, but he was the table-setter, he was the heart and soul of that team and being their on-court coach,” said Kelsey.

Broman and Pickett will play – not necessarily start – right away, but the pressure isn’t yoked solely on them to replace Smith and Moore. The Eagles return 5-foot-5 speedster Keon Johnson – a double digit scorer each of his first two years of college – 6-foot-2 rising redshirt senior Derrick Henry, and 6-foot-5 redshirt junior wing Roderick Perkins, who averaged 24.9 points per game as a sophomore at Div. II Erskine in 2013-14 and is now eligible after transferring.

Those guys should ease Broman and Pickett’s transition into college basketball, especially on the court. When Kelsey was an assistant at Wake Forest in 2005, the Demon Deacons rose to No. 1 in the country with a backcourt that included Justin Gray, Taron Downey and Chris Paul, all smaller guards who could play on or off the ball, and usually at the same time. Kelsey and the Wake Forest staff recruited Downey even though they already had Gray, then added Paul a year later.

With three highly capable ball-handlers/scorers in the lineup much of the time, Wake Forest ended up with the most efficient offensive team in the country in 2005. While Winthrop’s most evident strength will be in the post next season, the combination of the returning guards with Broman and Pickett sprinkled in should make for a talented group. It’s one that will take some time to mesh, but should be very good when it does.

“If you look at the strength of our team last year in terms of our scoring on the perimeter, obviously what we have coming back or coming in aren’t as proven,” said Kelsey. “They have a lot to prove, a lot to do.”

But Kelsey then said what Eagles fans are probably thinking after back-to-back trips to the Big South Conference tournament championship game and the addition of two intriguing, prime-time prep scorers to an already deep roster: “I’m really excited about our team next year.”

This story was originally published March 17, 2015 at 3:25 PM with the headline "Incoming Winthrop freshmen should help ease sting of losing Moore, Smith to graduation."