Tyler Haws can score. It’s all he’s really known.
The BYU star first came to the school during the 2009-2010 season, and immediately got to work, finishing the year with averages of 11.3 points per game and 4.2 rebounds per game while sharing the ball with current all-time BYU leading-scorer Jimmer Fredette. Haws was already an incredible shooter during his freshman season, shooting 49 percent from the field and 91 percent from the foul line, the latter ranking fourth all-time in NCAA history among freshmen.
Haws left for his two year Mormon mission the next year, and returned to the team for the 2012-2013 season even better, averaging 21.7 points and 4.6 rebounds per game on 48 percent shooting while playing 34.3 minutes per game. Since his breakout sophomore season, he hasn’t looked back, maintaining averages of at least 22 points a game and 46 percent shooting since. His current career total of 2,593 points is second all-time in school history, and if he is able to score eight points on Feb. 26 against Portland, he will become first, passing his former teammate, who is now a member of the New Orleans Pelicans.
Now in his senior season, Haws’ consistency is on full display, and he racks up twenty-something points every game with quiet regularity.
Quincy Lewis, Haws’ former coach at Lone Peak High School in Highland, Utah, knows a thing or two about Haws’ consistency.
“That’s the biggest thing about Tyler … he is the most consistent player I ever coached,” Lewis said recently after a Lone Peak game. “He gets the boring 25 or 30 points. It’s amazing that it’s every game, game in and game out. He’s one of those guys where you put him on the floor for 30 minutes, he’s going to put 20 points in the book. And some nights he might get 30 or 35.”
With Haws’ final season as a Cougar winding down, the inevitable questions are being asked, mainly, can he do this in the NBA?
People wondered the same thing with Jimmer Fredette, and so far the answer is no. Fredette, now in his fourth NBA season, has never averaged more than 7.6 points per game, after averaging 28.9 in his final season at BYU. To be fair, Fredette doesn’t get that many minutes, but that’s for a reason. He’s a shooter, plain and simple, and has average ball-handling skills as a point guard.
It’s safe to assume that Haws won’t do much better.
Draftexpress.com currently has Haws listed as the No. 57 pick, and he really shouldn’t move too much away from that spot, regardless of what he does in March. Unlike Fredette, Haws is a shooting guard, and at 6-foot-5, has a good four inches on his former teammate. But at 195 pounds, he is a bit undersized, even while playing on the perimeter.
Haws is notably one of the best mid-range shooters in all of college basketball, and has been for some time. Out of his 15.2 field goal attempts per game this season, 10.9 of them are two-pointers. His 51 percent percentage from inside the three-point line is impressive, but his 36 percent average from beyond the arc is simply just that…average. With the renaissance of the three-pointer in the NBA, those numbers aren’t going to cut it. GM’s around the league aren’t looking for scrawny two-guards that can hit shots from 15 feet away and play mediocre defense.
Players such as fellow shooting guard Kyle Korver, who is only slightly bigger than Haws, make a living off of getting open and hitting threes on a consistent basis. To give you an idea, while only 22 percent of Haws’ shot attempts are three-pointers, 72 percent of Korver’s are. Now it’s fair to say that Korver, who is currently experiencing one of the best overall shooting seasons in NBA history, might be a somewhat unfair example, but the point remains: At this point in time, Haws’ game is perfectly suited for an uptempo college team such as BYU, and nothing more.
The hard truth is that Haws’s mid-range game is a niche that has little value in today’s NBA.
It is true that stranger things have happened. There are plenty of players who have entered the NBA draft as former highly-productive college superstars, doubted by scouts and GM’s alike, only to make the necessary adjustments to their game and succeed somewhat close to the level they achieved in college.
For a player like Haws, who has produced in spite of his physical deficiencies through humbleness and hard work, I wouldn’t put such task past him. But if you’re using past history as a barometer of success for players like him, it’s highly unlikely. Still, don’t be surprised to see Haws work his way on to an NBA roster in the future, even if just a seldom-used role player.
