Originally published at: https://pistolsfiringblog.com/does-jawun-evans-get-enough-love-in-osu-lore/
Let’s put some respect on Evans’ name.
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Evans was the best I’ve ever seen at getting into the paint and scoring around contact, and he was tiny. Some of the things he was able to do in traffic around the rim was incredible. Also had an unguardable floater.
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Evans was quick into the lane. I do know he would have went places if he wasn’t injured. We have another that is going to be really good. Avery has a very quick first step on the defenders if he decides to penetrate. Sometimes people don’t really understand how good a player really is until they are gone. Avery has the potential to be one of them.
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Evans was one of those guys who came out too soon. Should have played at least one more year for the Cowboys. But the story about his injury reminded me of how much bad luck Travis Ford had due to injuries during his tenure. I also think it was bad luck that OSU had Travis Ford as a coach.
I’d like to second this. The way he would penetrate the lane and put the ball up high off the glass but a split second before you’d expect just threw the defenders off. I also loved how when a big would switch onto him, he would just size them up, dribble forward and back like five times, then once they were off balance just got to the rim and lay it in. That was awesome.
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Jawun was a blast to watch and also just an all around good dude.
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Another guy that I think gets massively overlooked but was huge to our team was Kendall Smith. His time here was short but he won a whole bunch of games for us. We don’t win bedlam in stilly without him, and we don’t sweep Kansas without him. No one ever talks about him.
He has almost all NCAA tourney trips for the school outside of Sutton and Iba. I wish he had a better reputation in Stillwater. For certain unfortunate reasons it was time to move on from him, but I think he was a lot more successful here than people give him credit for, basing off the university’s basketball history.
He was so good at reading defenders. He also had this really odd looking signature play where he’d be running full speed toward the basket with a defender on him, and somehow in midair lean back so far that it would almost look like he was laying flat in the air while still moving forward and floating it over the defender. His body control was wild.
Evans was wonderful to watch. He had great vision and could score off the dribble and had an 8 foot tear drop that seemed untouchable. Wish he had stayed all 4 years. Thanks for the article.