NCAA Basketball: Isaiah Stevens, Bub Carrington Players of the 1st week
By Bryan Mauro
Mid-major Player of the Week – Isaiah Stevens
The Colorado State Rams point guard should not need any introduction to Mountain West conference fans. The guard is going to be a household name throughout all the college basketball circles if he is not already. Colorado State looks like one of the best mid majors in the country and Stevens is a huge reason why. In two games last week he put up big numbers. On opening night against Louisiana Tech, the point guard scored 15 points to go along with 10 assists. Then in the second game against Wright State he scored 22 points with 14 assists. 24 assists are already a lot in two games but then seeing that Stevens only had 7 turnovers total in the two games is impressive. That is a 3-1 assist to turnover ratio.
Typically, guards are the players who are going to take your highest volume of shots and there are many great guards who don’t have high shooting percentages because they are volume shooters. The Colorado State star is also a volume shooter but he made most of the shots he took last week. In the 19 shots taken by Stevens he made 13 of them. That included going 3-7 from deep. The point guard also went 8-9 from the free throw line. For those of us that like math those are percentages of 68% from the floor, 43% from deep, and 89% from the free throw line.
The numbers from the field likely go down but Stevens is a great free throw shooter and three-point shooter and the current percentages are sustainable for him. He is showing why he was the overwhelming favorite for the Mountain West Player of the Year in 2023-2024.
Stevens is going to find himself on this list a lot over the course of the season. If he and the Rams have the season many expect them to the guard is going to have a ton of big games. The point guard currently has the top two assist games in Colorado State history with 13 last season and 14 just three nights ago. He already has the most assists in the history of Colorado State basketball. He is the type of player who could easily average a points and assist double-double on the season. It was quite a first week for the point guard for Colorado State.