Sixers Draft 2nd Round Wishlist: Tyler Harvey

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Tyler Harvey is at the top of my Sixers Draft 2nd Round wishlist. Harvey fell onto my radar because of gambling, pure and simple. My buddy fell in love with Eastern Washington University’s NCAA 3rd highest scoring offense so I hopped on board. I bet on EWU, their team over and, after watching a couple of games, the over on Tyler Harvey points per game. Harvey was the backbone of this high scoring offense and is probably the best shooter I watched last year.

Teams knew the EWU offense depended on Harvey and they still couldn’t stop him from scoring. He ended up leading the nation is scoring, averaging 23.1 points/game.  He shot 46.9% from the field, 85.2% from the line, and 43.1% from 3-point land. A knock on Harvey is that he didn’t play tough competition in the Big Sky Conference and that’s fair. However, Harvey did more than hold his own playing against better competition: 25 points vs. Indiana, 24 points vs. SMU, 31 points vs. Cal, 27 points vs. Georgetown. To put that in perspective, D’Angelo Russell averaged 17.5 vs. Indiana.

I’m not saying Harvey is as good as Russell. Harvey has to get better on defense and at 6-4 in sneakers he’s on the smaller side of shooting guards. He needs to work on his ball handling. The thing Harvey does well is score, just what the Sixers need. He can score via off the dribble, step-backs, pull-ups, catch-and-shoot.

Here’s an interesting stat that I found on CBSSports.com:

Over a sample of 1000-plus field goal attempts, Harvey is the possessor of a 62.9 true-shooting percentage, one of only twenty college basketball players since 1997 that can make that claim of high-usage and efficiency.

Another thing I like about Harvey is his mental make-up. The kid is a hard-worker in the face of adversity. Harvey didn’t make his high school squad until his junior year, it helped that he grew a foot. Harvey also received zero college scholarship offers. He walked on at EWU and went on to lead the nation in scoring. Reports are that he practices 350 made shots/day.

Would love to see this guy drafted by the Sixers Thursday night.