Ranking the 10 most terrifying guards in the NCAA Tournament

Guards win in March. That has almost always been the case in the NCAA Tournament, and while it can be fun when a big man like Zach Edey dominates the sport, if his guards aren’t ready for the spotlight, even his team can get bounced in the first round of The Big Dance. 

10 of the last 11 Most Oustanding Players have been guards, with UConn’s Adama Sanogo in 2023 being the lone exception, and just before those 11 years Kemba Walker had an unforgettable run to the National Championship in 2011. It feels like every season, a playmaking guard takes over March Madness, and whether he’s the lead in that year’s Cinderella story or the superstar for the national title favorite, a dominant guard can be terrifying to see in the bracket. So, I’ve ranked the 10 scariest. 

Criteria: Traditional point guards don’t exist in modern basketball the way they once did and even “guard” has become a bit of a nebulous term. Therefore, I’ve adopted a few criteria for my “guards” to make this list. 

The qualify for this list a player must:

1. Have a usage rate higher than 25% (according to CBBanalytics.com)
2. Be a primary on-ball creator for their team

Notes: Size does not necessarily factor into this list, though the two tallest players both happen to be 6-foot-6. Both “point guards” and “off guards” are included as long as they fit the above criteria. Simply put, these are players who have the ball in their hands often and create shots for themselves and others. 

Methodology: This ranking is not the “best” guards in the country. Rather it’s the most terrifying in a one-game setting. For me, this indexes a bit more toward nuclear scoring ability and on-ball shot creation. 

For example, Purdue’s Braden Smith (spoiler alert) is No. 6 on this list, but I voted for him as a First-Team All-American. He’s a phenomenal floor general and passer, and there may not be another point guard I’d rather have running my team for a season, but if I’m an opposing head coach in a one-game scenario, I’m not especially “terrified” he’ll go off for 40 points and bury me. 

There are five mid-major conference players on this list, but the first two come from particularly small one-bid leagues, and that means I have concerns about how their athleticism will translate against higher-level competition in the tournament. With that being said, Bennett Stirtz is a stud, and he and Drake will have Missouri on upset alert in the first round. 

A D2 transfer who followed his coach Ben McCollum from Northwest Missouri State to Drake last offseason, Stirtz burst onto the scene as the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year, averaging 19.1 points and 5.7 assists despite his team ranking 364th in Kenpom adjusted tempo. Stirtz is the maestro for McCollum’s methodical attack with an absurd 33.8% assist percentage which is 98th percentile, yet still fourth best among this group of guards. 

Stirtz is a knockdown shooter off the catch who can get space with a tight handle for pull-up looks. His biggest strength offensively, though, is his finishing at the rim, shooting a staggering 79.8% on those attempts. Will Power Conference rim protectors limit his effectiveness in March? That’s the big question, but if know he could lead the Bulldogs on a Cinderella run. 

I’ll admit that the “guard” criteria is stretched the most to include Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones, another former D2 transfer in his second season at UC San Diego. However, the New Zealander fits because he’s the primary offensive creator and assists leader for the Tritons with a 29.7% usage rate and 3.7 assists per game. So what, he’s 6-foot-6 and does some of that work from the mid-post. 

While he’s an under 20 point-per-game scorer, Tait-Jones surprisingly leads this group in points per 40 minutes because UCSD spent a lot of the season blowing out its Big West opponents. He’s a creative passer out of the mid-post, the short-roll, or as a pick-and-roll ball-handler who can step outside and get his own shot. But, most of Tait-Jones’s damage is done on the interior, attempting 57% of his field goals at the rim and another 26% in the paint. That aggressiveness has led to his remarkable 59% effective field goal percentage and a true shooting percentage that’s even better. 

Tait-Jones boasts a 66.2% true shooting percentage largely because he spent half of his time on the floor at the free-throw line. The senior led the country in total free throw attempts at 222 and his 79.8% free throw attempt rate is nearly unmatched in Division 1 by players with such a high usage rate. It’s a big reason why if you include UCSD on a graph of Power Conference players for usage rate vs player efficiency Tait-Jones finds himself next to Cooper Flagg and Johni Broome, two unanimous All-Americans (and both forwards I get it, but he’s basically a guard). 

UCSD faces Michigan in the first round and if there’s anybody who can get Vlad Goldin and Danny Wolf into some foul trouble, it’s Tait-Jones. 

Speaking of a deep run, Mark Sears led Alabama all the way to the Final Four a year ago and followed that up with a First-Team All-American season. He can still shoot the lights out and orchestrate the fastest-paced offense in the country. So how, exactly, did he end up at No. 8 on this list? Well, that First-Team All-American nod was more on previous reputation than performance and there’s an argument to be made that Alabama is a better team when he’s off the floor. 

Sear’s on/off splits are alarming. Alabama’s net rating jumps from 10.8 to 21.4 when he goes to the bench. With Sears off the floor, Alabama plays even faster, is more efficient, draws more fouls, and is even better on the defensive end. I do not believe that Sears is a bad player, but the reality is that his shooting splits nose-dived from last season, down 10% from the field and from three, and he’s the only player in this group with an effective field goal percentage below 50%. 

Sears has experience and that’s crucial in March. He still had explosive offensive performances this season and if Alabama gets rolling, he can absolutely lead them back to the Final Four, and that’s deserving of a mention in this ranking. However, Sears belongs more in a group with volatile inefficient volume shooters like Arizona’s Caleb Love, Mississippi State’s Josh Hubbard, and Texas A&M’s Wade Taylor than with the game’s best backcourt creators. 

With Tyler Kolek off to the NBA, Shaka Smart handed the reins at Marquette over to Kam Jones and while he’s a different style of point guard, he’s just as effective. Jones has an abnormally high dribble, but don’t confuse that for it being loose. At 6-foot-4, he’s incredibly difficult to stay in front of and scores nearly 60% of his points in the paint. 

If there’s a concern for the First-Team All-Big East guard it’s that his three-point shooting as fallen off with his increased role. He was hitting at a 40% clip last year on 6.5 attempts, and while his three-point attempts per game have dropped to 6.1, the difficulty of those shots has greatly increased and he’s dropped to 31.2%. He’s also only a 64% free-throw shooter. Similarly to the increased shot difficulty as the No. 1 option, Jones’s playmaking responsibilities are much bigger without Kolek running the show. He’s handled that much better, averaging nearly six assists to just 1.8 turnovers. His 3.31 assist/tov is the best amongst this group, even besting Braden Smith. 

Like any Shaka Smart team, Marquette thrives in transition and scoring off turnovers, but when they get stuck in the half-court game the burden has fallen to Jones to bail them out. He did it at a high level without a ton of help on the roster, but not high enough to grab a top seed in March Madness. 

There’s a real argument to be made that Braden Smith is the best point guard in the country and that’s why he was a First-Team All-American for me. However, at 6-foot without spectacular athleticism or a truly elite pull-up three-point shot his game may not strike as much fear in opponents in March. 

Smith is one of the best mid-range shooters in the sport, still attempting 26.2% of his field goals from the mid-range in true Chris Paul fashion. He can punish pick-and-roll drop-coverage with his pull-up and floater game, is too good of a passer to blitz, and can go by you if you switch. His two-man game with Trey Kaufmann-Renn has been highly efficient this season and Purdue’s offensive efficiency has hardly dropped off without Zach Edey. 

Smith can take over a game with his passing, but he also has the highest turnover rate of this group at 16.6% and struggles to get to the free-throw line. While he’d almost certainly have the ball in his hands as a decision-maker, he’s the only player on this list who may not be taking the last shot in a close game, and that dinged him in this ranking. 

Wisconsin’s John Tonje is the one player on this list who is a true off-ball scoring guard, an old-school shooting guard who can make plays for others, but really, he’s out there to get buckets. The 6-foot-5 sixth-year senior transfer from Missouri was abysmal in the Big Ten Championship Game, finishing 1-14 with nine points, but for the season he’s been a lethal three-level scorer. 

Tonje truly scores from everywhere on the floor. He’s between 45th and 60th percentile in field goal attempt percentage at the rim, in the paint, in the mid-range, and on both above-the-break and corner threes, and is above 60th percentile efficiency on all but the mid-range. He’s a physical driver who uses his balance and stout frame to hold off defenders on his way to the basket and create space to finish on the interior or draw fouls. He can get into a step-back off the dribble and is constantly moving off the ball hunting open threes or cutting to the rim. 

Tonje has gone over 30 points five times this year including a 41-point outburst when Arizona was in Madison back in November. Since then, teams have keyed in on him more defensively and he’ll have days when he goes ice cold, but if he’s on, he can take over and carry Wisconsin on a deep run. 

The Mountain West Player of the Year led Richard Pitino’s New Mexico squad to a regular season conference title and a 10-seed in the NCAA Tournament. On Friday, the Lobos will square off with Kam Jones and Marquette in one of the most highly-anticipated matchups of the first round. With two elite point guards going head-to-head, Dent, in my opinion, has the edge. 

The 6-foot-2 junior is a knockdown outside shooter, over 40% from three, but he attempts just two a game because he attacks the paint so relentlessly. Dent attempts 43.6% of his field goals at the rim and another 25% in the paint. He’s an elite finisher and draws 5.3 fouls a game, but what’s most impressive is his balance and ball-handling creativity. 

Dent isn’t just a straight-line driver. While he can blow past his defender when he needs to, Dent is ready for the help defender with a deep bag of dribble-moves and euro-steps to get to the cup. Once he gets there, he gets into rim protectors with his body to finish: 

If New Mexico slips through the first weekend and onto the Sweet 16, Dent will be a household name and a March Madness star. 

Deciding between PJ Haggerty and Donovan Dent is honestly just splitting hairs. They have identical effective field goal percentages. I mean come on! 

Dent is the superior playmaker and slightly more disruptive defender, but Haggerty gets the nod because, in my opinion, he’s just a better, more versatile scorer. If I had to bet on either guy scoring 40 in the first round, it’d be incredibly close, but ultimately, I’d put my money on Haggerty. 

Haggerty is just 6-foot-3, but he obviously has a plus wingspan and uses his length to rise up overtop of defenders to be lethal in the mid-range, the one area Dent struggles. He’s not as creative a driver, but he’s just as effective, getting to the paint and the line even more frequently. Plus, he uses his size on the offensive boards, scoring about a bucket a game on second-chance opportunities. 

Haggerty had 42 points in the AAC quarterfinal against Wichita State, and he did it without hitting a single three. He didn’t hit one the entire AAC Tournament, but he averaged 27.7 points a game and made 31 of 32 free throw attempts. The Tulsa transfer was a Second-Team All-American in his first year playing for Penny Hardaway and he could lead the Tigers to the second weekend if Nique Clifford and Colorado State don’t get in his way. 

No player in the country has been better than Nique Clifford over the past month. Niko Medved’s 6-foot-6 do-it-all senior guard has led the Rams to 10 straight wins and a Mountain West Tournament Title. All Clifford did in the conference tourney was average 25 points, 10. 3 rebounds, and 4.3 assists, while shooting 50% from the field, 44% from three, and 83% from the line. Not bad. 

As a scorer, Clifford can bury a spot-up three, drop a mid-post fadeaway, and pull up from seemingly any angle with his quick release. But maybe the most impressive part of Clifford’s game is how easily he attacks close-outs with his long strides. If you come at him and aren’t under control, he’ll be by you and at the rim in one dribble. It makes him nearly impossible to defend. He’s over 70% as a finisher at the rim and 46.7% from mid-range, hitting 15-foot baseline jumpers at nearly a 60% clip. He’s the rare player that can make the mid-range analytically efficient. 

Landing a 12-seed means that Colorado State needed to win the Mountain West to get into the tournament, and as the pressure rose, so did Clifford’s game.

Florida is my pick to win the National Championship and is one of the deepest teams in the country. Todd Golden’s squad has three guards scoring over 13 points a game, Will Richard, Alijah Martin, and First-Team All-American Walter Clayton Jr. 

His numbers may not be as gaudy as a few of the mid-major guards on this list, but if Clayton needed to be a 20-point-per-game scorer, he would be. All season, Clayton has been the best guard and second-best player in the best conference in the country, and while he has just one 30-point game all season, he’s more than capable of taking over and carrying the Gators offensively. 

Not the most athletic player in the country, Clayton is always under control, expertly navigating the floor and getting to his spots for a pull-up or step-back jumper. He doesn’t get to the lane as often as other downhill guards like Dent and Haggerty, but he doesn’t need to because he does so much damage off perimeter dribble-handoffs as a shooter and a passer. When he does get to the basket, he keeps SEC rim protectors off balance with jump-stops or wrong-footed finishes as a savvy veteran should. 

Florida scores in waves and Clayton driving force behind their tsunami of offense. Nobody wants to play that team in the tournament, and nobody wants to gameplan for its point guard.