Big Ten Basketball: Top 20 impact transfers heading into 2021-22 season

No. 3 DeVante Jones – Michigan

After three seasons at Coastal Carolina where he started all but two of the fifty games he participated in, the 2020-21 Sun Belt Player of the Year and the conference’s second-highest scoring average will be starting at point guard for the Big Ten’s Regular Season Champions.

The 6-1 graduate student will no doubt increase the Wolverines’ 67.8 Pace of Play – which was the third-highest in the Big Ten –  as he was a factor in Coastal Carolina’s Sun Belt leading 72.7 Pace of Play.  Jones averaged over 19 points per game by playing at a high speed, whether it be off a miss with a long outlet pass, or starting the transition by getting one of the seven rebounds he gets per game and most notably getting one of the Sun Belt’s leading steals, Jones turns defense into offense quickly.

Jones and the Wolverines are going to create a symbiotic relationship where they will help each other be better. In the half-court Jones loves to get speed going to the basket- as he attempts over five free throws per game at makes 86 percent of them – Jones will only have more success once he is put in the pick’n’roll with Hunter Dickinson.

Big Ten Basketball opponents are going to face a different skill set than they did in Isaiah Livers, which will alter head coach Juwan Howard’s offense for the 2021-22 season. Even with two top 40 freshman recruits in the backcourt, it will be the grad student giving the freshmen an education.