STARKVILLE — Abdul Ado is a bit of a men’s college basketball anomaly. In most cases, high school talent elite enough to play Division I basketball reveals itself in point totals: take his Mississippi State teammates for examples, almost all of whom averaged at least 15 points per game, some of them as high as 20 or more.
Ado got to this level by doing everything else: rebounding, blocking shots and chasing loose balls, all while averaging fewer than 10 points per game, including fewer than eight per game as a senior. It was all those things about him that MSU coach Ben Howland longed for when the NCAA required Ado to sit out last season. Since then, Howland has needed Ado to add scoring responsibilities; after weeks of begging, he’s starting to see progress.
As MSU (18-7, 6-6 Southeastern Conference) has turned its season around with four wins in five games, it has coincided with some of Ado’s best and most aggressive offensive play of the season. Everyone involved hopes for more when MSU goes to Vanderbilt (9-16, 3-9 SEC) 6 p.m. Wednesday (SEC Network).
“The great thing is, every single teammate is telling him, ‘You’ve got to shoot, you’ve got to go to that left hand.’ They’re coaching him, and that’s fun, when your team is coaching each other,” Howland said about the freshman forward earlier this season. “I think our guys are looking for him.”
Ado’s teammates can look for him all they want, but until recently, there was no guarantee he would turn a touch into a shot.
In December, for example, Ado played in every game but only took more than three shots in a game three times, including just one shot in the lone loss of that month, at Cincinnati, while MSU went 6-21 from 3-point territory. Ado shot 52.1 percent from the field in December, but still couldn’t be convinced to take more than 3.2 shots per game.
Ado was well aware of the desire for him to take more shots and he was willing to work on it; he admitted it was uncomfortable for him, given it was a role he’s never been asked to play. His teammates and coaches knew that; that didn’t make the necessarily make the process pain-free.
“When he first got here, it was like pulling teeth begging him to shoot. He would get the ball on an offensive rebound, underneath the hoop, and immediately pass it back out. No one’s ever told him he’s supposed to shoot when he’s in there,” Howland said. “Like I told our team many times, nobody has ever accused Abdul of taking selfish shots. It’s never happened. A lot has been getting his mentality to change: we need him to score and you have to be aggressive to score.”
The stories of Ado’s dedication to everything but shooting are endless. Howland remembers times in practice where Howland would be the screener in a pick-and-roll play, but instead of rolling to the basket he would follow the ball and screen for it again. Ado is the kind of person who wants to do well at everything and takes it personally when he doesn’t, to the point where Howland said Ado has taken his coaching too personally because, “he wants it so bad.”
“This is the same guy I had to beg to get more sleep because he’s up until 1 a.m. studying and he’s got 7 a.m. workouts,” Howland said.
MSU is finally starting to see the fruits of that labor. Ado has averaged 10.8 points per game over his last five games compared to seven in the previous 19 games and done so on just one more shot attempt per game, averaging 5.6 over the last five compared to 4.6 in the first 19. It’s produced some of MSU’s best offensive basketball of the season: according to Ken Pomeroy’s advanced statistics, MSU has averaged more than 100 points per 100 possessions in each of its last five games after doing so just once in the six games prior.
Ado’s individual offensive rating — an advanced measure of how much offense a player produces per possession that factors everything from made and missed shots to assists, turnovers and free throws — has followed the same trend. It has been over 100 in four of the last five games, with the one outlier being 97.
It’s justification for what his teammates have been telling him for weeks.
“We just tell him to shoot the ball. It’s hard because it’s something he doesn’t like to do,” junior guard Quinndary Weatherspoon said. “We try to put it in him in every practice: shoot the ball, shoot the ball, shoot the ball.”
As MSU moves forward with a more active Ado, it has reason for optimism. As a player who is still adjusting to more shots, Howland is seeing a player developing the arsenal to handle that load. Howland pointed to one of his buckets in the home game against Missouri on Jan. 27 when the bench exploded in celebration at Ado scoring on a left-handed hook shot, something Howland said he’s, “been on bended knee begging him to do it.”
It’s only a matter of time until the next step comes — and he has three more years of eligibility to reap the rewards.
“He’s got to get better at sealing and making sure he’s not using his arms and using his lower body to do it,” Howland said. “He’s got to learn if he wants the ball, he’s got to lay his body on somebody. Guards are fearful of a turnover because they get the blame, so they’re only going to pass to him of they’ve got the seal.
“He’s still learning. He’s always been a passer first and a shooter second and we’re trying to flip that.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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