I recently saw where Ken Pomeroy has developed supposedly objective player comparisons based upon a slew of different metrics. Pomeroy admits that there is some subjectivity to the process, because he gets to pick the metrics upon which the comparisons were made. I thought this was cool. But, when I went to check it out, I had no idea who the people were that he was comparing Christian Watford and Jordan Hulls to.

And maybe that tells us something about the current career arc for those two. But there are a number of us here who have been watching IU basketball for a long time, and have followed it closely. One of the joys of prolonged fandom is being able to tap into a reservoir of subjective or objective understanding of a program, and to relate current players to favorite (or decidedly unfavorite) players from previous periods. So I am interested to see what you all think. Your analysis can be empirical, or simply what your eyes tell you. It can be who they remind you of now, or who you think you'd like them to become.

Let's start with Watford.  

In his body style, Watford reminds me of Jared Jeffries. And I would love for him to evolve into Jeffries. But his game does not seem to be the same. For one thing, my non-empirical memory of Jeffries tells me that he was a much better ball handler than Watford. Jeffries could legitimately run the point at 6'9", and then go post someone up. As an aside, and looking ahead, that's what I want to see from Trey Lyles.

At this point in his career, Watford reminds me a little bit of DJ White, in the sense that what he needs to develop is some toughness. Watford is a different player than DJ, with a much better outside game. DJ was a power forward. Even though Watford is not a lot smaller, he plays a lot smaller, and is a small forward, through and through. But if he can develop some toughness which, to his everlasting credit, DJ did, then I think that he can become a similarly potent college player.

Perhaps the best comparison to my subjective mind right now is Kirk Haston. I think that Watford can be that effective from the outside, but we have not had the opportunity to see that to this point in his career. I loved Haston. Loved his ability to handle the ball. Loved the matchup problems he could create as a big small forward.

Let me know what you think.