Mississippi State Basketball: Malik Newman to transfer

Malik Newman will no longer be playing college basketball for Mississippi State basketball. Where will he play next and what can he contribute?

Not long after freshman point guard Malik Newman removed his name from the NBA Draft, he announced that he was going to transfer from Mississippi State.

Last season under head coach Ben Howland, Newman averaged 11 points, 2.8 rebounds, and 2.2 assists per game. He shot 39 percent from the floor and 38 percent from three, while turning the ball over all too often.

A player of Newman’s caliber and potential rarely hit the transfer market. Yahoo! Sports notes that Newman is just the second former Rivals top-10 recruit to transfer in the past decade, the other being Khem Birch.

And really, above all, this hurts Mississippi State more than anyone. Newman was one of two double-digit scorers that would have returned, along with Quinndary Weatherspoon, and was truly one of the programs future core players.

Now, Mississippi State has even more work to do to get their program back to respectability.

The Clarion-Ledger reported that there was a lack of trust between Newman and Howland. If that’s true, that’s bad news for Howland, who has had a pretty poor reputation since his departure from UCLA.

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Will this affect his ability to recruit other top high school players? Will other players have similar “feuds” and issues?

As for Newman, he originally picked Mississippi State over Kentucky, Kansas, and Ole Miss. I’d expect all three of those teams to be in on Newman again, although both Kansas and Kentucky may have moved on to other potential future point guards. Kansas is trying to court Duke transfer Derryck Thornton and Kentucky seemingly adds a new five-star lead guard every season.

Ole Miss could also be an option if Newman wanted to be an immediate star when he is indeed eligible.

A lot of teams are sure to come calling, but if Newman wants to maximize his potential, he’ll want to go to a school that is needs a point guard, and runs an offense reliant on pick-and-rolls.

He didn’t exactly dazzle in his one season at Mississippi State. He scored, but not very efficiently, His mediocre assist rate (14.4 percent) can be attributed to him not having the ball in his hands very often, but his assist to turnover ratio was 1.167, which isn’t very good at all.

Newman’s best skill is his shooting, and thankfully, he’s really good at creating his own shot and knocking down big jumpers from the perimeter. Still, it’s hard to take much away from his one season at Mississippi State since his relationship with his coach was clearly rocky and he dealt with a nagging toe injury from day one.

No matter where he goes, he’s going to have to earn his playing time. He won’t receive 35 minutes a night just because he was a McDonald’s All-American.

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But either way, the potential is there, and he could still be one of the better point guards in the country a couple of seasons down the road.

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