Ultimate driving machine Adam Pickett sparked Winthrop against Coastal
Winthrop coach Pat Kelsey tries to recruit high school players with at least one elite skill that will instantly translate to the college level.
Watch Eagles freshman guard Adam Pickett play basketball for more than three minutes and it’s easy to see his elite skill. Pickett is what Kelsey calls “a BMW,” a reference to the Bavarian car maker’s claim of being the “ultimate driving machine.”
Pickett is a BMW Z3 sports car.
“He’s always gonna be aggressive,” said teammate Xavier Cooks after the Coastal Carolina win Thursday night. “He can really create a lot of good shots and he plays hard every day.”
With Winthrop unable to make shots from the perimeter in the first half against the Chanticleers, Kelsey turned to Pickett, a one-track-minded player seeing more playing time since junior Rod Perkins went down in early January with a broken finger. The Eagles were 0-for-9 from 3-point range when Kelsey turned to the perfect antidote for an offense settling for distance jumpers too often, Pickett.
He got the ball on the left wing and immediately drove for two points before a steal and a layup a few minutes later, and a strong finish in the paint with 17 seconds left in the half. He scored two more times in the second half, including a putback from an offensive rebound.
“I thought a guy like Adam Pickett was a huge catalyst in today’s game,” Kelsey said Thursday night. “He’s a guy that doesn’t get a ton of minutes but he comes to practice every day with a great attitude. When his name’s called he runs in there and gives us great minutes. He was really a spark and a catalyst to get us scoring.”
Adam is a natural born awkward finisher. You saw that in recruiting.
Winthrop coach Pat Kelsey on freshman Adam Pickett
Winthrop’s coach lauded Pickett’s ability to awkwardly finish, a skill the Eagles actually work on. Jumping off the wrong foot, using the off hand, or avoiding a shot-blocker mid-air all constitute awkward finishes.
Pickett’s go-to move is an up-and-under reverse layup. He’s perfected switching the ball in mid-air from one hand to the other, using the rim as protection from shot-blockers. It’s a 1970s ABA, cognac-smooth move.
“It just happens in mid-air,” said the left-handed Pickett. “I just make it up as I go.”
Pickett learned to put English on the ball for reverse layups at the YMCA his sophomore year of high school. But his propensity to slash to the rim developed much earlier.
“My brother used to, like, bully me,” said Pickett, about his now 27-year old sibling Patrick. “He wouldn’t let me shoot jump shots so I had to become a slasher. Eventually it turned me into a slasher to the point where I just wanted contact.”
Most of Pickett’s high school drives to the rim resulted in more than contact; he scored 706 points his senior season, an average of over 32 per game. In 24 college games this season, he’s attempted 53 2-pointers and just nine 3’s.
There is a reason Pickett is only averaging about seven minutes per contest: his game is nowhere near finished. The 6-foot-1 Virginian needs to improve his outside shot and defensive focus. He’s one of just two players on the team with more fouls committed than rebounds (28-27), and he also needs to shore up his ball-handling, crucial for a player that puts the rock on the deck at great speed.
“Offensively, I just need to shoot more,” said Pickett, referring to practice outside of games. “And seeing the whole floor. A lot of times when I come in the game I’m always nervous so I’ll have tunnel vision. There might be a spray man over here but I’ll only see this half of the floor and he’ll be completely wide open. But that’s just nerves and inexperience.”
The college-ready attributes Pickett brought are enough to help Winthrop right now, of course his scoring ability, but also the aggressive nature that spurs him toward the rim almost every time he gets the ball.
Pickett had 13 points in nine minutes against Truett-McConnell in mid-November, and then scored 10 in 15 minutes against Rio Grande on Dec. 28.
But the 10 points he scored against Coastal in as many minutes trump any of his other contributions so far. It was an encouraging development from the rookie; Winthrop will almost certainly need to pull its BMW out of the garage again in the coming weeks.
Eagles have been pretty good under Kelsey with just one day in between games
Winthrop hosts Asheville Saturday at noon in a matchup of the Big South’s standings-toppers. Since coach Pat Kelsey took over in the spring of 2012, Winthrop is 11-5 in games played with one day’s rest.
The Eagles’ assistant coaching staff breaks up the scouting duties for each opponent before the season starts, splitting the job three ways among Mark Prosser, Marty McGillan and Brian Kloman. Each assistant is preparing for an opponent three games out and as soon as one game finishes video coordinator Matt Griggs loads up Kelsey’s lap-top computer with the next opponent’s last five or six games. That (digital) film is divided into a slew of sub-sets: by possession, by particular offensive play, any number of different ways to splice it.
Kelsey praised Winthrop for letting him have Griggs as a full-time employee, something not every Big South basketball program has. Eight of 10 other Big South schools responded to an email Friday, with only two of them - High Point and Campbell - also having full-time video coordinators.
This story was originally published February 19, 2016 at 4:47 PM with the headline "Ultimate driving machine Adam Pickett sparked Winthrop against Coastal."