Season averages:

Minutes per game – 6.5

Points per game – 1.2

Rebounds per game – 0.9

Assists per game – 0.5

Blocks per game – 0.4

Field goal percentage – 66.7% (16/24)

Season highs:

Points – 6 vs Xavier

Rebounds – 4 at Creighton

Assists – 2 (three times)

Blocks – 2 at Xavier and vs UConn

Overall thoughts:

Braden Pierce improved throughout the season, that much is a fact. With Nico Onyekwere redshirting and Tafara Gapare leaving the program, Pierce was the only big man left on the roster near the end of out-of-conference play. Those developments allowed the 7’ center to play in every game from December 6^th against Penn and on.

The minutes played only reached double-digits on three occasions, with the high on the year being 11 against both Connecticut and St. John’s in February. The correlation there is that both of those teams have large frontcourts. When it wasn’t necessary, the goal was to limit Pierce to less than eight minutes in competitive games.

Pierce is able to use his size to defend the rim, averaging 1.7 blocks per 36 minutes played. Over the course of the season, he did improve his ability to finish around the rim, making the occasional jump hook or push shot. To a lesser extent than Duke Brennan, Pierce was able to facilitate some off the screen-and-roll.

What we didn’t see any of was the shooting touch that Kevin Willard talked about upon Pierce’s commitment to Villanova. Willard said, “Our staff has always appreciated Braden’s shooting skill as a stretch five.” There are two reasons why this needs to brought up:

1. With Pierce’s below average lateral mobility, he will need to be more valuable on the offensive end to not be played off of the court.
2. Pierce has been in college since the 2023-24 season, all under Willard at Maryland. I was hoping to see this skill readily available at this point.

Development isn’t necessarily linear, so I don’t want to assume that this couldn’t be true in the future. But given the obvious limitations that we saw against the better teams, even in a small role, it may be better for both parties to look in a different direction. Villanova should be looking to improve the center position, so there’s no realistic scenario where Pierce is the starter there next year. Pierce should be looking to play more than seven minutes per game next year. And between him and Onyekwere, the latter has more untapped potential seeing that he is two years younger.