Column: College Basketball World, Give Mark Sears His Flowers

It's time for the senior point guard to get some national recognition for the elite season he's having.

Alabama basketball point guard Mark Sears made back-to-back plays during the first half of Saturday's win over Texas A&M that left my jaw on the floor.

First, he drove left and made a no-look pass to Grant Nelson, while he jumped and spun in the air to the delight of the Coleman Coliseum crowd. 

One possession later, he sized up an Aggie defender, before stepping back to drill an NBA-range 3-ball, prompting a flustered timeout from Texas A&M head coach Buzz Williams.

If you'd like a visual, watch the video in the tweet below.

This is such an absurd sequence of plays to make on back-to-back possessions pic.twitter.com/MahudoSfWM

— Blake Byler (@blakebyler45) February 18, 2024

As I watched these plays unfold on the sixth row of Coleman's press seating area, I thought to myself, why don't more people talk about this guy?

When you look around college basketball, there aren't many players doing what Mark Sears is currently doing. The crazy part is there's even less people talking about what Sears is doing.

Sears currently leads the entire Southeastern Conference in scoring average at 20.6 points per game. If it holds, he would be the first Alabama basketball player to average 20 or more in a season since James "Hollywood" Robinson in 1993.

It's been over 30 years since an Alabama player scored as much as Sears has been this season. Brandon Miller didn't do it last year. Collin Sexton didn't do it in 2018. Trevor Releford never did it during his All-SEC years, nor did Richard Hendrix, or Mo Williams, or any other Alabama great in recent memory.

Sears has scored at least 20 points in a game for eight straight games, and 16 times overall in 2023-24. That's already more than Miller did a season ago, when he took home the conference's player of the year award. 

His scoring ability has been taken to another level in his second year of high-major basketball. If you want to know what makes him such a threat, just listen to Buzz Williams after Sears scored 23 on his team on Saturday:

"He's hard to guard off the bounce. Weapons surround him, I think their style of play allows him to play with great leverage, both offensively and defensively. I think he plays with really good pace, not just necessarily the tempo they want to play at, but he has a really good feel for time, score and momentum. He's a three-level scorer. Does a really good job of getting fouled. Does a great job of getting the defense into rotation, that's why his assist-turnover ratio is so high."

You can't sum it up much better than that. 

Sears doesn't really have the "look" of a star basketball player. He's not 6-foot-7-plus, he doesn't have a massive wingspan, he doesn't jump out of the gym, he's not insanely athletic. In fact, at the NBA Draft combine last offseason, he measured out to be below 6-feet, despite what Alabama lists him at.

But even without all of that, he's smart, he's crafty, and he's insanely skilled. 

A few weeks ago, the Bob Cousy Award, or the award for the top point guard in all of college basketball, released its 10 finalists for the 2024 season. Sears wasn't listed as a finalist.

His stats are more than comparable to the 10 finalists for the award:

Player	School	PPG	APG	FG%	3PT%
Mark Sears	Alabama	20.6	4.0	51.6	45.1
Max Abmas	Texas	17.3	4.4	43.1	38.4
Boo Buie	Northwestern	19.0	5.2	43.0	41.3
Dajuan Harris	Kansas	8.0	6.5	42.1	41.7
Tyler Kolek	Marquette	15.7	4.9	48.3	40.4
Tristen Newton	UConn	15.0	5.8	40.8	30.8
Jahvon Quinerly	Memphis	13.2	4.9	41.0	35.6
Jamal Shead	Houston	12.8	5.8	44.1	34.1
Isaiah Stevens	Colorado State	16.2	7.4	47.5	46.7
Wade Taylor IV	Texas A&M	19.4	3.6	37.0	31.2
Zakai Zeigler	Tennessee	11.0	5.6	42.7	34.9

Of course, it's notable that Sears is scoring more than every player on the list, but to me that's not even the most impressive part. It's his efficiency. 

Sears is the only player on that list shooting better than 50 percent from the floor and better than 45 percent from beyond the arc. Sears' field goal percentage of 51.6 currently ranks seventh in the SEC, which includes big men, and his 3-point percentage of 45.1 ranks third in the SEC.

But when you dig even deeper, it becomes even more apparent how rare it is for someone to be able to score his efficiently. 

Across all of college basketball, there are only five players that average at least 20 points while shooting at least 50 percent from the field: Purdue center Zach Edey, San Diego State forward Jadeon Ledee, Washington forward Keion Brooks, Morehead State forward Riley Minix, and Mark Sears.

Sears is the only guard on that exclusive list, a position that typically takes lower-percentage shots than forwards, and especially centers. 

When you add one more criteria to the list, and make it players who average at least 20 points, shoot at least 50 percent from the field, and shoot at least 40 percent from deep, there's one player in all of college basketball: Mark Sears.

(Technically two, but Edey shoots 50 percent from three on just two attempts this season, so he doesn't qualify.)

No one in the entire country is scoring as much as Sears is, as efficiently as Sears is. And somehow, it's going unnoticed. Not just by awards committees, but by the national college basketball media as well.

On Saturday, College GameDay was live from Auburn, and in honor of the NBA's All-Star weekend, the crew did a college basketball all-star draft from a pool of players given to them. There were 11 guards on that list, none of which were Mark Sears. 

But, why?

The more I think about it, the more I struggle to wrap my head around it. Sears is the most efficient player in the country for his level of scoring, and he's leading the current No. 1 seed in the SEC that was picked outside the top-4 in the preseason conference poll.

Even the college basketball computer metrics agree. The analytics service KenPom has an algorithm that calculates his website's player of the year standings, and Sears comes in 7th, out of every single player in college basketball. 

So that's my ask to you, college basketball world. Notice and respect what Mark Sears is doing, because it's borderline unbelievable. 

The season isn't over yet, but if he keeps this up, he should be first team All-SEC, he should be SEC Player of the Year, and he should be an All-American. Give him the respect he deserves.

Blake Byler covers Alabama Crimson Tide basketball for BamaCentral. 

See also:

Three Takeaways From Alabama Basketball's Win Over Texas A&M