After a blistering start to the season, both Trae Young and the Oklahoma Sooners have come back down to earth.
After a 14-2 start to the season, the Sooners have lost eight of their last 10 and five in a row, dropping a 77-66 decision to Texas on Saturday. Young has kept his average up over 25 points per game during that span, but he’s been shooting about 21 times per game to put up those numbers. By comparison, he was averaging 30.1 points on 19 field goal attempts per game over his first 16 games.
After Saturday’s defeat, Young blamed increased scrutiny from both opponents and NBA scouts for the drop in performance.
“I’m getting guarded like nobody else in the country is being guarded, scouted on like no one else in the country is,” Young said, via Jake Trotter of ESPN. “It’s a mystery coming out each and every game to try and figure out how a team is going to guard me and how I’m going to dictate how my team wins.”
It’s easy to forget that Young is still a freshman, given the comparisons and praise he received early in the year for his remarkably high level of play. This is a level of scrutiny he won’t have faced before. It’s easy to see why some scouts might be a little less enthusiastic, though, given he’ll be facing even better players at the next level, albeit probably not as the main focus early on.
