Player Preview: Kihei Clark
The polarizing senior point guard will be asked to fill his biggest role yet
Virginia’s basketball season is now less than two months away, so as tipoff against Navy on November 9 draws closer, we’ll be doing a player-by-player preview of everyone on the 2021-22 Virginia roster. For each player, we’ll look at the best parts of their game and where they have room to improve, then come up with one goal for the season and make one bold prediction.
BPM, or box plus-minus, uses box score statistics to estimate a player’s contributions on offense and defense. A oBPM of 0 represents an average player on offense, and a dBPM of 0 represents an average player on defense.
An oBPM above about 4 is very good. Above 6? Star-level. Upwards of 8, and you’re one of the best offensive players in college basketball (for some context, on the 2018-19 NCAA champion team, the trio of Guy, Hunter and Jerome had oBPMs of 7.6, 7.4, and 6.8, respectively).
dBPM is a bit flatter. Above 2 is good, above 4 is great. A dBPM of 6 is usually reserved exclusively for elite rim protectors — Isaiah Wilkins in 2017-18 finished with a 7.3 dBPM when he won ACC Defensive Player of the Year.
Here are the offensive and defensive BPMs of every player on Virginia’s 2020-21 team:
Now, highlighted in orange, here are the offensive and defensive BPMs of every player on that team who’s left for the 2021-22 season:
The team’s four players who were above average in both oBPM and dBPM — Jay Huff, Sam Hauser, Tomas Woldetensae, and Trey Murphy — are all gone. Only two major minute-getters from last season’s roster remain.
The first, Reece Beekman, was the topic of our first player preview a few days ago. The second, Kihei Clark, is the focus of today’s preview.
The Good
Offensively, the best part of Kihei’s game has always been his quickness off the dribble. At his height (5’9 for the last three seasons, now 5’10 according to the new roster), blowing by defenders is the easiest way to create quality looks.
Sometimes, Kihei will just catch taller flat-footed defenders by surprise, and when the paint is vacated he’s very good at getting downhill and getting a shot up before the defense has time to react.
Kihei’s scoring game, though, has always come second to his ability as a playmaker. It’s really fitting that the biggest play of Kihei’s career was a pass to Mamadi Diakite, because he’s always had a knack for smart passes to bigs (albeit, he isn’t usually throwing them from beyond halfcourt with one second left in an Elite Eight game).
Using his burst off the dribble to find soft spots in defenses that sometimes seem to forget he’s an actual offensive threat, Kihei is a crafty and creative passer when given even the smallest amount of space to create.
Here he is tossing an alley-oop over ACC Player of the Year Moses Wright:
It would also be naïve to discuss Kihei’s strengths without mentioning his defensive intensity while defending on the ball.
He’s invariably a total thorn in the side of opposing point guards. Using his quickness and defensive instincts, his ability to stay in front of every ball-handler he’s ever defending is truly unique — in a vacuum, it sounds absolutely insane that a 5’9 true freshman played their way onto the court on a Tony Bennett team because of his defensive prowess, but that’s exactly what happened.
There’s also something to be said for Kihei as a leader. He’s been on the court for some of the biggest moments in program history, and those intangibles have to count for something.
Also, I’ll use this spot to remind everyone of that time when Kihei crossed up a Tech defender and hit the game-winning three, driving a dagger through the heart of Cassell.
The Bad
Kihei’s first look is always to pass the ball, which can be both a blessing and a curse.
While this worked out very well for him on teams where there were scorers around him to lighten the load — most notably the 2018-19 title team, where he attempted a shot once every 6.5 minutes he was on the court — it becomes a challenge on teams that lack scorers around him.
Unfortunately, this 2021-22 team is going to be one of those rosters. There are very few proven scorers currently on the team, and Kihei is going to have to step up and become one of them.
This will require a mindset shift for the playmaking point guard, who’s been hesitant in the past to shoot off the dribble or try and finish through contact.
Virginia can also try to mitigate Kihei’s hesitancy to create for himself by getting him advantageous switches. In the past, he’s been more comfortable attacking bigger defenders from the perimeter with that quick first step mentioned in the “good” section, so it would behoove the team to put him in situations where he’s displayed scoring ability in the past.
Kihei’s historically inconsistent jump shot is also concerning. Unlike other undersized guards who’ve been willing to just fire away from three like Jose Alvarado or Chris Lykes, Kihei has always been a bit hesitant to let it fly from beyond.
His three-point attempt rate (the percentage of a player’s shot attempts that are threes) has decreased in every season he’s played so far at Virginia, falling from 54.1% in his freshman season to just 30.0% last year.
His percentage has always hovered in the average range — his best year was 37.5% as a freshman, his worst 32.3% as a sophomore, and last year he finished at 34.1% — which pretty accurately reflects the eye test.
When the shot is falling, especially off the dribble, it looks good — take that huge basket against Virginia Tech mentioned earlier as an example. But for every make, it feels like there’s also a bad miss, like in this video below where a defender totally disrespects Kihei’s shot and he can’t capitalize.
Because of his proven commitment at Virginia, it’s very possible that Kihei can grow into the scoring option the offense will need this season. But there’s also plenty of evidence to the contrary — that he’s a hesitant shooter and scorer who’s never scored very efficiently and prefers to pass the ball.
One Goal for 2021-22
Kihei becomes more confident as a scorer, which in turn opens up his playmaking game. He averages more assists per game than he did last season (4.5) while also recording fewer turnovers per game (2.1).
One Bold Prediction for 2021-22
On a team with few alternatives, Kihei assertively steps up and becomes the team’s clear lead guard. He becomes the first Virginia player to average 15 points per game as well as 5 assists per game in the Tony Bennett era.