Hello, Andrew Fleming! As the Magic Eight Ball foretold, the 6'5" shooting guard from Nashville, TN announced his commitment to the Iowa Hawkeyes on Monday afternoon, using micro-blogging website Twitter dot com, which we have never heard of.
I have decided to play college basketball at the University of Iowa! #HAWKEYENATION pic.twitter.com/AV8EUB5kkZ
— Andrew Fleming (@Andrew22Fleming) May 12, 2014
First off: I don't believe Fleming would be going straight up for the jump shot that close to the bucket. That's bad basketballing. I don't like that. So far, bad—off to a bad start.
Fleming's got one of the best offer sheets from an Iowa commit since Adam Woodbury's who's-who back in 2011. Ohio State, Florida, Memphis, UNLV and Vanderbilt were all in the mix, though recent commits took some of those options off the shelf. Still, for a program that lost top target Tyler Ulis to Kentucky and (more troublingly) Willie Atwood to Arizona State, it's awfully nice to see Fran go up against some big-name programs for a guy he wants and come away with a commit.
Let's see some actual highlights now.
Better, closer, warmer.
Fleming's got a compact, quick shot from outside, and lord knows Fran McCaffrey won't hesitate to give him the green light on that. At 6'5", Fleming should be able to get the shot off against most of the perimeter defenders he'll face, especially with such a reliable motion.
We also see glimpses of him handling the ball in both the half-court set and in transition. This is a staple of McCaffrey's coveted players; they don't all have to play point, obviously, but Iowa gets tremendous mileage and value out of guys like Josh Oglesby, Aaron White and even Adam Woodbury being comfortable dribbling and distributing. And though Iowa looks set at point guard for a long time to boot, there's still a dearth of shooting guards that Fleming helps shore up. At this point, he doesn't have a ton of competition for minutes by 2016.
While Fleming can mix it up in the interior against HS/AAU competition, we don't expect to see a ton of that at the collegiate level unless there's a blatant mismatch Iowa wants to take advantage of. Fleming doesn't have a refined post move set (he is a shooting guard, after all) so either he'll need to expand that facet of his game or you can disregard his work around the bucket in the highlight video. Still, it's nice to see the willingness to mix it up.
Also, Fleming's reel includes some flashy assists, and again, great that he's at least trying on that front, but if we're being honest some of those passes are a bit sloppy. That's an area where most players develop in college, though, so we're not terribly concerned. Just don't expect this guy to stick at the 1 any time soon.
This makes two commitments for the 2015 class, with SF Brandon Hutton starting the class off back in March. Also, recall that the 2016 class is underway with PF Cordell Pemsl of Dubuque Wahlert committing just a couple weeks ago. For the record, Pemsl is very happy about this development:
Iowas bout to do it big these next years! Don't play no games!
— Cordell Pemsl (@c_pemsl40) May 12, 2014
Young sir, we're all as excited as you are, but Iowa still needs to play the games.