2012-13 Player Review: #0 Jamil Wilson

What We Said:

Minimum Expectation: Wilson ended up with 9.2 points and 5.3 rebounds per game after he was inserted into the starting lineup following Davante Gardner's injury last year. 10 and 6 should be the basement here.

Wildest Dreams: Wilson's a gifted athlete and clearly a tough minded guy, given that Buzz was getting on him last year about blocked shots that he missed out on. Getting to play with a healthy Otule & Gardner frees Wilson up to do more on the court and get pushed by Buzz to maximize his potential. Those bits combine to turn Wilson into an All-Big East First Teamer by the end of the season. Yeah, that's right: I'm calling for The Leap.

Worst Nightmare: The light doesn't go on for Wilson and he has a pedestrian season.

This is the second draft of Jamil Wilson's 2012-'13 season review.

The first draft of the review came before I took a hard look at his season numbers, when I looked exclusively at Jamil's stats over the last 15 games of the season. In those contests, the Big Bagel averaged almost 12 points a game to go along with nearly 5.5 boards per, including sublime performances against the anthropomorphic glow sticks of Notre Dame (19 points, 4 boards, 1 steal, 1 block) and Miami in the Sweet 16 (16 points, 8 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 blocks). Jamil hit double figures in points in 13 of his last 15 games, hit 25+ minutes in 11 of the last 15 contests, and had at least 5 boards in all but 5 of the season's last 15 tilts.

At the same time:

The first draft of this review overlooked the fact that Wilson turned in a donut against Butler in the Maui Invitational (0 points, 3 rebounds, 1 assist in just 14 minutes), looked like he didn't belong on the floor against North Carolina Freaking Central (NCFC, as I call them), and was held to single-digit scoring outputs in 8 of the season's first 14 games. For a guy like Jamil, who's got as much talent in his little finger as most players do in their entire body, that's wholly and completely unacceptable.

The good thing, of course, is that Jamil didn't come on like a lion and then go turtle-in-the-shell as soon as the rough-and-tumble Big East season reared its ugly head. Instead, Jamil saved his best ball for last -- or, at least, his best ball for when he was held out of the first 5 minutes of each conference game so he didn't pick up a cheap foul -- and looked every bit the stud we expected when he transferred home from Oregon two years ago.

And therein lies the rub with Jamil Wilson: many (most?) of us came into this season expecting Jamil to make The Leap, to put his impressive gifts on display and make this team his own. That didn't happen, of course. Rather, after a hit-and-miss start, we saw just enough to convince us that this year -- that is, 2013-'14 -- is the year that Wilson is really going to put it all together. The hope is that unfulfilled promise isn't going to be the epitaph for Jamil Wilson's Marquette career when all is said and done. But he's left himself precious little time to make sure that's not the case.

Best Game: If you've got a better line than Jamil's submission against the U in the Sweet 16, I'd like to see it: Wilson hit 3 of 4 triples and 5-of-9 from the floor overall en route to a dominating 16-point, 8-rebound, 2-assist, 3-block performance to carry MU to its first Elite Eight berth in 10 years.

Season Grade (1-Worst Nightmare to 10-Wildest Dreams): A 6 might seem like an overly harsh grade, but bear in mind that we set the floor for Jamil at 10 points and 6 rebounds per contest, which he didn't hit. Still, the last two months of the year came as close to "YOU TOTALLY REDEEMED YOURSELF" territory as we've seen at Marquette in a long time and left us once again waiting with baited breath for next year.