Prospect of the Week: Dalton Knecht, 6-6 senior SG/SF, Tennessee
(Note: This section won’t necessarily profile the best prospect of the week. Just the one I’ve been watching.)
I went to Athens, Ga., on Saturday to see No. 5 Tennessee take on Georgia and get an in-person look at Dalton Knecht, and let’s just say he did not disappoint. The fifth-year senior scored 36 points as the Vols rallied
to beat the Bulldogs 85-79.
Knecht has a lot to recommend him as a role player at the next level. He’s listed at 6-6 and looked every bit of it when I went courtside to see him work before the game, plus he has a solid frame with square shoulders and is able to play through contact. However, the real attraction is his shooting. He gets into his motion very quickly, either off the catch or off the dribble. He’s very comfortable going into pull-ups and has a clean, repeatable stroke.
A nitpicker would say he shoots through his guide hand a bit and could use a bit more arc on his shot, but he’s clearly a plus shooter at 39.7 percent from 3 this season on high volume – though you’d like to see his 79.8 percent mark at the free-throw line notch up a bit.
More notable, perhaps, is how good Knecht looked playing on the ball and making decisions. Tennessee was facing an upset loss in the final minutes until the Vols disbanded their previous attempts at offense and put the ball in Knecht’s hands up top with a ball screen. He spent the final minutes repeatedly carving up Georgia during a 15-1 game-closing run.
The above clip shows a left-handed drive and finish, but Knecht also had three assists, including an elite no-look dime where he jumped and stared at the corner and drew two defenders with his eyes before flipping a lefty pass to a wide open Jonas Aidoo under the basket. He also pulled up off a screen to hit a go-ahead 3 with just under two minutes left, and Tennessee never trailed again.
Bigger picture, the two biggest questions scouts will have are about Knecht’s age and defense. He has taken the long way to this point, starting at junior college and transferring up from Northern Colorado before this season. He will be 23 on draft night. This isn’t unprecedented — Boston’s
Derrick White took a similar pathway, for instance — but Knecht will be stacking up against players three and four years younger on draft night. Additionally, while Knecht has positional size, his lateral mobility will be tested more severely at the next level; his low rates of steals don’t hint at a disruptive defender, and those numbers were similar even in the Big Sky Conference.
Nonetheless, it’s a skill league, and Knecht can both make catch-and-shoot jumpers and snag some of his own food. His age knocks him out of the lottery, even in this year’s weak draft, but his skill level at his size probably lands him somewhere between picks No. 15 and No. 45 this June.
theathletic.com
