Player Preview: Reece Beekman
The second-year guard is a stellar defender with room to improve on offense
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.
Today’s player: second-year guard Reece Beekman.
The Good
The best attribute of Beekman’s game is definitely his on-ball defense. It’s rare for guards under Tony Bennett to see heavy minutes as first-years — Kyle Guy, for example, played just 18.6 minutes per game in his first season — but Beekman’s grasp of the defensive system led to him playing 29.4 minutes per game, more than anyone except Sam Hauser, Kihei Clark, and Trey Murphy.
He’s excellent at pressuring ball handlers, and plays much bigger than his 6’2 frame defensively. Quite a few guards and wings tried to work Beekman in the post last season, only to end up attempting a fadeaway midrange jumper when they found themselves unable to gain ground.
Beekman also has extremely quick hands, and once he forces opponents to pick the ball up, he’s great at finishing the play by poking it out (shoutout to @GodILoveTheHoos for posting this video and also being a great Twitter follow).
His hands and defensive instincts can also give some trouble to big men down low who try to catch the ball at Beekman’s level. Here, he negates what should be an easy finish off a well-designed inbounds play and turns it into a turnover.
On offense, Beekman’s game is much more raw. But there are still positives to be found, mostly in his driving and playmaking ability. Though he was undoubtedly a beneficiary of the ridiculously good shooting Virginia had last season, Reece demonstrated an ability to get downhill and finish.
Beekman also did a good job keeping the ball moving, finishing the year with a quality assist-turnover ratio of 2.5 (his backcourt mate Kihei Clark, often lauded for his ability as a passing point guard who protects the ball, finished with just a 2.1 assist-turnover).
He wasn’t asked to bring the ball up the court too often, and typically filled an off-ball role, but had enough flashes at least as a finisher to infer that he can be a quality slashing guard in future seasons.
Reece also did a good job getting to the free throw line, finishing the year with a .300 free throw rate — better than every regular minute-earner except Kihei. That ability to draw contact should only improve as Beekman becomes more comfortable getting to the basket and finishing in future seasons.
And, though most of his shooting falls into the less-than-stellar category, he did hit one huge shot in the ACC tournament to knock off Syracuse. Definitely not afraid of the moment.
The Bad
There are two major offensive issues with Reece’s game that need to be ironed out if he ever wants to take the reins from Kihei Clark as the team’s lead ball-handler.
First: the offensive hesitancy. Though he’s very capable of beating his defender to the basket, Reece isn’t always sure what to do once he gets there.
On some occasions, he’ll simply turn around and kick the ball out instead of taking a semi-contested but still high-percentage look, like in this video:
In others, he’d finish awkwardly at the basket, making shots more difficult than they needed to be. Beekman’s general unwillingness to put up shots or finish plays led to him finishing last season with just a 12.5% usage rate, the lowest among all regular rotation players.
The second concern is the jump shot. It simply has to come around if Virginia’s offense is going to have any semblance of spacing this season.
Last year was nightmarish from beyond the arc for Reece. He shot 24.3 percent from three on 1.5 attempts per game (9-for-37 total). In ACC play, he was just 5-for-24. Opponents left Beekman totally unguarded on 84 percent of his jump shots, per Second Spectrum. He hit just 25 percent of those looks.
That simply isn’t good enough, especially alongside another reluctant three-point-shooting guard in Kihei Clark. If Beekman can’t sort out the jumper this year, he could start to lose playing time to Indiana transfer Armaan Franklin, who isn’t as adept as a ball-handler or defender but is willing to let it fly.
It’s reasonable to expect Beekman’s confidence to grow as his role in the offense becomes more prominent — this season, he won’t have three elite scorers (Huff, Hauser, and Murphy; they all finished above the 95th percentile in points per possession last season) to defer to offensively. The shooting coming around is less of a sure thing, especially given his spotty mechanics. Either way, those two limitations are the biggest obstacles to Beekman becoming an extremely well-rounded player.
One Goal for 2021-22
For Beekman to become a willing and able three-point shooter. Let’s aim for 2.5 three point attempts per game (up from 1.5 last season) on 35% accuracy (up from 24.3%). Those numbers aren’t elite, but they’re serviceable, and serviceable is all Reece should need to open up room for the rest of his offensive game.
One Bold Prediction for 2021-22
Reece Beekman averages 1.5 steals per game and becomes Virginia’s fifth ACC Defensive Player of the Year award winner under Tony Bennett.