What Auburn basketball is getting in Texas Tech transfer Kevin Overton
A quick-draw lefty with deep range, efficient drives and a love of dirty work? Overton should transition well to Bruce Pearl's Tigers.
AUBURN — So far in this roster reloading process, Auburn basketball has landed some splashy, stat-heavy pickups.
Keyshawn Hall led the entire Big 12 in scoring this past season. KeShawn Murphy will be the SEC’s leading returner in PER. Abdul Bashir led all of JUCO basketball in scoring. Emeka Opurum wasn’t far off from averaging a double-double and won his conference’s Defensive Player of the Year with nearly three blocks per game.
But great college basketball teams — especially ones under Bruce Pearl — have been defined by quality depth. To have that, you’ve got to find players who are comfortable and effective at playing non-starring roles. These are the grinders, the glue guys.
Auburn looks like it might have a new one of those necessary pieces.
On Thursday afternoon, a few hours after Chad Baker-Mazara announced his decision to enter the transfer portal ahead of his final season of college eligibility, Auburn picked up a commitment from Texas Tech guard Kevin Overton.
A 6-foot-5, 180-pounder originally from Oklahoma City by way of Sunrise Christian Academy in Kansas — a program that produced NBA first-rounders Buddy Hield, Gradey Dick and Matas Buzelis — Overton started his career at Drake.
In his one season with a Bulldogs team that won the Missouri Valley and captured a 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament, Overton was an All-Freshman pick who started all 35 games and averaged 11.3 points per contest.
Overton then stepped up to high-major basketball with Texas Tech. He only started the season opener for the Red Raiders, who had the Big 12’s leader in offensive rating (Chance McMillan) and a blue-chip freshman (Christian Anderson) at the same spot. He played just 43.2% of the available minutes in conference play for Texas Tech.
“Overton's departure felt obvious since the middle of January as on-court minutes kept declining,” Nathan Giese of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal wrote recently. “He called this season "a mental year" during the team's run in the NCAA Tournament, which finished in the Elite Eight.
“While Overton could have easily checked out, he stayed engaged with the team and put in the effort whenever he did get on the floor. That's a credit to him in a tough situation where he was expected to have a bigger role that just didn't materialize.”
That second paragraph is pretty important. Even though Overton’s playing time fluctuated throughout the season — he had six minutes against TCU sandwiched between a pair of contests with 20-plus, for example — he found ways to be productive for the Red Raiders.
According to CBB Analytics, Overton had a positive plus/minus in 28 of 36 games this season for Texas Tech. He scored in double figures 11 different times, including six games of 17 or more points. In exactly half of his appearances, he had at least five rebounds. He hit a 3-pointer in 21 games, multiple triples in 10 and three or more in six different contests.
His per-game averages of 7.8 points, 3.7 rebounds and 0.9 assists might not jump out to anyone. But he was fourth among Texas Tech’s rotation in all three categories, per 40 minutes. Considering that team had eventual national champion Florida on the ropes in the final minutes of the Elite Eight, that production shouldn’t be overlooked.
When Overton got consistent playing time for Texas Tech, things went well. The Red Raiders were 19-4 in games in which Overton played 20 or more minutes. When he was below that number, they were 8-5 — 11 fewer wins and one more loss.
Only time will tell what kind of role Overton will have at Auburn. A lot of that might come down to how the rest of the roster shakes out, as the Tigers have more slots to fill over the next several weeks.
There is something to be said, though, for a player who has already proven he can be a positive difference-maker on an elite high-major team, even if he’s not getting the massive spotlight of a star. Great squads, particularly ones that go deep in the postseason, need players like that.
Here is our breakdown of Overton’s game, which contains more than four dozen clips from his sophomore season at Texas Tech. Like the rest of the recent breakdowns we’ve done on Auburn’s new transfer additions, each section starts with a supercut that highlights a particular area of his skill set.
Let’s start with Overton’s ability to get hot from deep, especially when he’s firing away from a certain side of the floor.