Getty Murray State guard Ja Morant
Murray State Racers star guard and top NBA draft prospect Ja Morant is putting on a show in every sense of the word in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. During the team’s game against the Marquette Golden Eagles, Morant has pushed his team to a double-digit second-half lead.
Not surprisingly, Morant is making headlines with his own play. While he’s done a number of impressive things in this game, one posterizing dunk sent the internet into a frenzy. The huge dunk by the Murray State star extended the lead to 13 points and had the announcers going wild early in the second half, as The Ringer showed.
THIS IS NOW A JA MORANT FAN ACCOUNT THANK YOU 💪
Morant’s play has been superb through nearly three-fourths of this game, and he’s certainly outplayed opposing point guard Markus Howard to this point. With just under 12 minutes remaining in the game, the 12-seed Racers jumped out to an 18-point lead.
While Howard has managed to find the bottom of the hoop, Morant has done a little of everything. The likely top-three pick in the 2019 NBA Draft has 15 points, 12 assists and seven rebounds at the time this is being written.
UPDATE: Morant finished the game by leading the Racers to an 83-64 upset of the Golden Eagles while posting a triple-double in a dominant effort. The Murray State star totaled 17 points, 16 assists and 11 rebounds while shooting 5-of-9 from the field and 2-of-2 from beyond the arc. He also knocked down all five of his free throw attempts.
Ja Morant’s Impressive Season
Through the first 31 games of the season, Morant has averaged 24.6 points, 10.0 assists and 5.5 rebounds while shooting 50.3 percent from the field. He’s nearly doubled many of his numbers from the 2017-18 season to this year, and in turn, has grabbed the full attention of NBA draft scouts.
While a number of teams will surely have a ton of interest in Morant, it’s becoming more and more apparent that the NBA draft lottery will be especially huge this year. The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie released his latest mock draft and pegged Morant as the No. 2 overall pick, sending him to the Phoenix Suns in the process.
There are quite a few teams who have a need at point guard, but even for those who don’t, the potential to draft Morant would be tough to pass on. As the draft approaches, he’ll join Duke stars Zion Williamson and RJ Barrett as the most talked about and sought-after prospects.
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