Brayden Burries is flying into lottery talks
It's rare for a freshman guard to contribute on day one, especially for one of the nation's best teams and especially in a secondary role. Arizona has unearthed one of the rare ones.
Arizona was a hard team to quantify for the last few years. After a second-place finish in the AP Poll in 2021-22, Arizona has slid down every year, finishing 15th last season, and falling to Duke in the Sweet 16 as a four-seed; the lowest placement the team has received since Tommy Lloyd took over.
All it took was one class.
Lloyd pulled in his highest-rated recruiting class ever in 2025, the second-best crop of freshmen nationally behind their NCAA Tournament vanquishers. After an impressive performance this past summer with Team USA in FIBA U19 play, forward Koa Peat was the headlining name. A 30-point debut against the reigning national champions, Florida, all but confirmed that.
As the season has gone on, and Arizona has submitted itself as one of the country’s best teams once again, currently sitting No. 1 in the AP Poll, it’s been another freshman who has blossomed as the team’s leading scorer, and potentially best prospect: Brayden Burries.
Depending on the rankings you looked at, Burries was Arizona’s highest-ranked freshman, though heading into the season, scouts who were more concerned with NBA projection had reservations.
Burries was a mid-range centered scorer who didn’t always knock down his 3-pointers, didn’t always get all the way to the rim, and didn’t always look to pass or play defense. Some looked to the shot-making and rejoiced about the upside, while others worried he was too one-dimensional.
Burries didn’t come out strong either. In his first five games, he eclipsed double-digit points just once in an 18-point performance against Utah Tech that saw him commit more turnovers than assists.
Since then, Burries has been on fire. In the 10 following games, he’s not scored less than 10, including five 20-plus point performances. The stretch has also seen Burries shoot 57.9% from 3, and put up a 2.5 assist-to-turnover ratio.
The two best games of the stretch have come against real competition, too. Burries scored 28 apiece in a pair of games against Alabama and Kansas State, two high-major teams ranked in the top-70 nationally.
These are the games scouts look for for high-quality film. While the Utah Tech game showed promise and signs of what Burries’ potential may be, the difference in talent from Arizona to its opponent gives little insight into what it will look like at the NBA level. Alabama and Kansas State aren’t the Denver Nuggets or Oklahoma City Thunder, not even the Washington Wizards pre-Trae Young, but the talent difference between them and Arizona is null in comparison to Utah Tech.
The main reason Burries has been able to dominate as he has is a change in shot selection from his high school years. With a wider floor, better shooters and bigs who can seal away would-be rim protectors, Burries has more room to use his solid burst and straight-line speed to jack-knife all the way to the rim.
It’s been a work-in-progress throughout even his college career, but in his most recent game against Kansas State, Burries scored 20 of his 28 points in the painted area, much of it created on his own.
The game—in which Burries shot 9-of-9 at the rim—brought Burries up to 77.6% shooting at the rim, a number that ranks in the 90th percentile nationally among guards.
Burries’ pace as a ball-handler plays a big role in this. His top-end speed may not be Westbrook-ian, and his jitter with the ball in his hands is far from the realms of Curry or Irving, but his subtle changes of speed and direction have made him hard to stop.
Colloquially, this might be referred to as the game slowing down for Burries, which is huge, especially considering he has yet to blossom into a big-time shooter.
Burries shoots just 33.8% on his 3-pointers, a pretty average rate on pretty solid volume. He’ll confidently pull from deep, early in the shot-clock or off movement, but hasn’t put it all together yet to be a knockdown guy, thriving on volume with the trust that he’ll at least make a couple.
It’s kept Burries afloat in terms of overall efficiency, marking a 61.4% true shooting percentage, and in trading the mid-range attempts he soared on in high school for shots at the rim, he’s changed the way scouts look at that efficiency.
Say his percentages at the rim and from 3 remained the same, but you took 25% of the shots in each zone and turned them into mid-range jumpers, which comprise roughly 10% of Burries’ shots as is. To maintain that 85th percentile true shooting among guards, it would have to come from uncharacteristic, outlier good mid-range shooting, which has only ever translated for a couple of prospects ever.
Alongside the projectable, efficient scoring profile, Burries’ impact on offense has gone beyond for Arizona. As previously mentioned, in his 10-game stretch of double-digit point performances, he’s given out 2.5 times as many assists as he has turnovers.
Two-point-seven assists per game isn’t going to blow minds, but next to his gaudy scoring numbers, it’s easy to forget Burries isn’t the one typically bringing the ball up for the Wildcats. Senior guard Jaden Bradley handles those duties.
That said, Burries has still blossomed as a passable, even effective, initiator. A quick scan through his assist tape won’t blow minds. It’s a lot of one-pass-away hits to shooters and entry passes for post-ups and isolations, but they’re the read he needs to make.
On top of his positive impact on the turnover margin purely on the offensive end, Burries has become a sticky-fingered thief for Arizona. His 1.8 steals per game rank 12th in the Big 12 this season, while providing solid possession security on the glass.
Altogether, it’s made Burries an immensely effective and efficient two-way player with a projectable shot profile and consistent flashes of star power through just 15 collegiate games. Perhaps more noteworthy is how quickly the development has occurred, and how stark the contrast between his first five games and last 10 appears.