Seth Tuttle is a name that even casual college basketball fans have started to hear the last few weeks.
The Northern Iowa star has emerged as an All-American candidate. Tuttle is currently third on the Ken Pomeroy player of the year list, which helps to show that every stat out there loves him… and why shouldn’t they? Any way you break it, Tuttle is having a tremendous season. He’s averaging 15.6 points a game, 6.6 rebounds, and 3.2 assists. Tuttle is shooting a ridiculous 62.7 percent from the floor. The funny thing is that his numbers have basically remained the same during conference play, relative to the non-conference slate, save for a full-point boost in points per game.
Tuttle is also a very good foul shooter at 77 percent. He’s hit a solid 45.9 percent of his shots from three-point range. When combined with his 62.7 percent number from the field, Tuttle’s true shooting percentage (weighing free throws and three pointers) is 69.5, the fifth-best mark in the nation. When you mix only three pointers into the pot for effective field goal percentage, Tuttle ranks seventh at 66.1 percent. No matter what stat one wants to use, Seth Tuttle has filled up the basket.
You’ve heard the name, you’ve seen the overwhelming numbers, but how does Tuttle do what he does? That’s something you may be wondering.
Never fear, The Student Section is here. We are going to break down Tuttle’s game by taking a look at how he gets his baskets. In addition to that, we’ll examine how he gets baskets for his teammates. Three assists per game leads the Northern Iowa Panthers. Thanks to the power of Vine, we are going to see how he gets it all done.
All the vines in this post are from ESPN through Watch ESPN.
In our first clip, we see a Tuttle assist. Seth drives down the lane, which mesmerizes the defender helping off the wing. You can even see his suprise when Tuttle kicks back for the three. It’s as though he suddenly remembered, “Oh yeah, that’s my man,” before futily rushing back. That’s some of the Tuttle vision.
That’s a great, great pass by Tuttle. The Evansville defense looked confused by the movement, but who would expect a cross-court laser pass there? Certainly not the man in the middle of the defense who tried to double then ran across to challenge — he ran across at least.
This was a transition play. Tuttle shows a little screen and roll action with the guard. Player No. 55 is already on his heels — the shot fake puts the nails in his proverbial coffin. Seth Tuttle shows that he can dunk all cool.
We move to the Bradley game to show off more of the Tuttle transition game. All he does here is haul it down the court. No one accounted for Tuttle. A better pass and maybe this ends with the Bradley player getting dunked on instead of laid up on. (That sounded weird.)
Another transition-type play is made by Tuttle in this clip. You can see the Bradley defense starting to get set. The quick post by Tuttle draws a double-team. The rotation by Bradley’s guard was very poor, which led to Bohannan drilling a wide open three-point bomb.
Tuttle’s range was mentioned up top. Here’s what happens when you give him a wide open look from three.
This is what happens when you give him another wide open look from three. This was a very good play by the guard to drive that far in the lane. That’s probably the easiest shot Tuttle has attempted all season long.
UNI loves sliding a shooter down to the corner when Tuttle has his back to the basket. If he’s one on one, Tuttle can turn and score. When the double comes, he’s looking at a wide open shooter. One thing I’ve noticed is that all of Tuttle’s passes are right in the hands; the shooter doesn’t have to move before going into his motion.
Northern Iowa doesn’t play at a very fast pace, but the Panthers will transition you to death. Few bigs run the court as well as Seth Tuttle.
The question now becomes: How does Seth Tuttle do his magic against the better teams on the schedule? He put up a solid 9-8-4 assist game against Iowa, but that game was on the Big Ten Network, which has no archives.
“I saw the VCU game, did he even play?” That does raise a good point. Tuttle was held to just 5 points on 2-4 shooting in 21 minutes of a double-overtime game. It was by far his worst game of the season. What is a testament to the rest of the team though, is that UNI nearly pulled that one off on the road.
The game we do have against top flight competition is the same top flight competition that Northern Iowa plays tomorrow, Wichita State. That contest saw Tuttle go absolutely nuts for a career best 29 points on 9 of 13 shooting. For this game, ESPN has video clips. (Thanks, ESPN.) Right off the bat with the pick and pop. As we established, you can’t leave Tuttle on the screen. If the guard uses it or not, you have to stay with him because he can drain that shot any time. Tuttle doesn’t always have to pop. When the defender hedges the screen pretty hard, Tuttle cuts to the basket for the easy dunk. There was not a lot of help defense in this play.Here’s another example of Tuttle’s excellent passing. All five of the Wichita State players are in the lane when this pass is being made. They all collapse on Tuttle, who makes a great little pass out to the shooter. This poor defender gets frozen on after Seth takes him to the basket. The handoff action had the defender watching the ball, which sucked for him because Tuttle blew right by him.This time WSU wanted him to take the ball from that deep. What the problem was, was that Tuttle had so much room to get a running start at the defender. No help came to close off the lane and it was another easy bucket with a foul attached.
Give that man a cigarette and blindfold. Wichita State chose not to double team. They got the full Tuttle experience as a result.
Hopefully this post has caught you up on one of the better passing big men in the nation. Tuttle runs the floor extremely well, he has a nice jump shot. He has a solid post game, although not a lot of that was seen in the provided video clips.
