Year-in-Review: David Roddy took the next step towards greatness in 2020-21

FORT COLLINS, CO. — Colorado State’s logo might be a Ram but one of the most important players on the team is a “unicorn”. 

Listed at 6-foot-5, 252 pounds, David Roddy looks like he should be cracking skulls on the gridiron or “superplexing” Brock Lesnar in the WWE. As the old adage goes, though, you can’t judge a book by its cover. While Roddy may look like a future World Heavyweight Champion, he’s deceptively one of the most skilled and graceful guys on the court. 

Roddy possesses the rare blend of size, strength and skill that makes him damn near impossible to shut down on a consistent basis. He’s a Swiss Army Knife that allows Niko Medved to place him in any role on the floor — from running the point to banging in the paint — and be successful in doing so. 

Much like Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Karl Anthony-Towns, etc., Roddy is technically a big man — somewhere between a forward and hybrid center — but he really doesn’t have a singular position in the traditional sense. Sometimes Roddy plays the center role for the Rams and takes on 7-footers like Neemias Queta. Other times Roddy quarterbacks the offense in transition, looking more like a guard than what we are used to seeing from big men. 

Before we really dive into Roddy’s game, though, we need to first set the scene on the type of person he is: a special one. 

As a highly regarded recruit coming out of Breck High School in Minneapolis, MN., expectations for Roddy could not have been any higher. From the first time he set foot on campus in September, 2018, Ram Nation believed Roddy to be the next great superstar in CSU men’s basketball history. 

Honestly, that is what has always been so impressive about Roddy’s team-first mindset. There have never been any doubts about his ability to be an effective D1 hoopster — not by the staff, himself, or the fans. So, seeing the way he carried himself as a true freshman was unique, especially for someone with so much hype coming in. 

As talented as Roddy is, and believe me when I say he’s extremely talented, the biggest thing that separates Roddy from other ballers around the league is his ability to play within the flow of his teammates. If the situation called for Roddy to go full Kobe and put up attempt after attempt, that’s what he would do. But for the most part, Roddy is just trying to make the best play available.

That’s what makes him special. He’s truly one in a million but always plays like he is just one of five players on the floor. It’s a form of unselfishness that we don’t typically experience at the D1 level, not from superstars at least. 

In 2020-21, Roddy was certainly a superstar for the Rams, leading the team in average scoring (15.9) and rebounding (9.4), as he went on to earn First-Team All-Mountain West honors for the first time in his young career. He paced the squad in total scoring for the season as well (446 points), narrowly edging out Isaiah Stevens (429). 

What’s especially impressive about Roddy’s scoring figures from this past season is how effective he was over the course of the year. According to college basketball reference, Roddy averaged 20.2 points per 40 minutes in 2020-21. What’s more, he did so on 52 percent shooting from the floor, even despite trying to score against players much taller than himself.

The really encouraging thing is that he has the potential to be an even better scorer as he continues to refine his offensive game in the paint, and hopefully develops a more consistent outside jump shot down the line.

He’s only going to get better in the paint but opposing defenses sometimes bait Roddy into taking uncontested 3-pointers because he hasn’t shown the ability to consistently knock them down at a high volume. If he could improve from being a 28-percent 3-point shooter to somewhere around 33-35 percent, it would really put defenders in a difficult position.

I don’t ever expect Roddy to be James Harden, or the type of player that puts up 10+ threes in a single game, but just having the ability to make the defense think twice about leaving him open on the outside would be a huge advantage for him. 

Do they give him the shot and run the risk of letting him heat up from the perimeter? Or do they close out on him and run the risk of him driving right past them to the hoop? You’re kinda screwed either way. But as soon as you start second-guessing yourself on defense, you’re gonna be a step slow, and that’s all the time an athletic freak like David Roddy needs to beat you. 

With what he can already do down low, if Roddy develops a steady jumper from deep, he’ll likely be in contention for Mountain West Player of the Year.

Finally, I would be remiss to not bring up Roddy’s impact on the defensive end. After understandably going through a bit of a learning curve as a freshman, Roddy’s defensive rating of 92.7 was by far the best on the team last season, and it’s because he learned how to square up against bigger dudes without fouling. 

Roddy played 62 more minutes as a sophomore than he did as a freshman and drew more difficult assignments in the paint, yet he reduced the amount of personal fouls he was called for from 76 to 52, and decreased his points allowed per 100 possessions by about 10 as well. That’s just an absurd amount of improvement for one season, especially considering he didn’t even get a traditional offseason. Just imagine the type of improvement he will be able to make this summer, in a more traditional scenario where he’ll be able to work with teammates, coaches and trainers in person. 

While I could ramble on about Roddy, the simplest way to put it is that he has been everything Ram fans hoped he would be.  They thought he was the type of player that could transform a program coming in, and he’s definitely served a massive role in the turnaround of CSU Men’s Basketball over the last two seasons.

Considering what we’ve already seen from him, my expectations are abnormally high going into Roddy’s third full year in the program. But I have a pretty good feeling that he won’t let me down.