If there is a player that would love more than anything to reverse his luck this season, it’s Jason Jitoboh.
Starting in high school at Hamilton Heights in Tennessee injuries have plagued the big man resulting in three years at Florida where he has never quite been able to get into a rhythm of a regular shift and weeks in a row with a predictable spot in the rotation.
It’s not just the injuries themselves that have held Jitoboh out of games. A gigantic frame with a propensity to put on weight, even minor injuries that kept him off the court meant him getting heavier, decreasing his ability to move defensively and limiting the energy he had to play more than a few minutes at a time.
Jitoboh’s bad luck hit a new level on January 26th, as in the midst of playing the best basketball of his career a swipe across his face had an opponent’s finger make contact with his retina, damaging it to the point of surgery needing to happen immediately. Jitoboh wasn’t cleared to return to the court, and spent the next several months of his life forced to wear sunglasses nearly every waking hour of the day while his eye recovered.
Despite only appearing in 51 games over the last three seasons, fans have come to love Jitoboh and he is a player that, when healthy, a lot of people have called for a bigger role.
Since coming to Florida, it looks like Todd Golden agrees. He has mentioned multiple times that Jitoboh will be a key piece and has suggested he is something the Gators will even play through offensively at times. While most of the center minutes will almost certainly be soaked up by Colin Castleton, there has been plenty of implication that Jitoboh is the clear number two who will be asked to lessen the heavy minute load of Castleton last season.
What exactly can be expected of Jitoboh this season? Is he the player some fans think should be getting more minutes, or are some of the struggles he has had on the court not just injury related and he still has improvements to his game to make?
The biggest mystery in evaluating Jitoboh is definitely not knowing exactly where he was physically in the games he was able to appear in. There were games he was out there looking out of place or slow, but just how much of that can be chalked up to injury, or chalked up to conditioning–and what is the relationship you can establish between injuries and conditioning.
When it comes to evaluating Jitoboh and what he could bring the team this year in the Todd Golden era, let’s start with the offense.
Here is where Jitoboh shined the brightest, using his 6’11”, 300-ish pound frame to get to his spots around the rim whether on cuts or on post ups. Despite being a mountain of a man, Jitoboh actually had soft hands and great touch, meaning that if he caught the ball with a foot or two in the paint he was probably going to be able to finish.
According to Synergy Sports Tech, Jitoboh was in the 99th percentile nationally in finishing on cuts around the rim, shooting 90% on these attempts. Of course, some of these are going to be drop offs where he is wide open and can flush a dunk uncontested, but there were still times he had to finish through defenders and that number shows his ability to use his size and great hands to score around the rim.
Jitioboh was also in the 74th percentile in post up scoring at 0.94 points per possession, making it an efficient option to throw the ball into him at the block to go one on one.
For Jitoboh, being a dominant offensive player will be a necessity to play bigger minutes. At that size there are going to be issues defensively, so he will need to be a massive mismatch on the other end. Being in the 74th percentile of post up scoring is quite good, but that number might need to climb if he’s going to be considered a true offensive weapon. One tool that could be added to his game is the three-point shot, something that he hasn’t yet experimented with but something that Todd Golden said that he was going to let him do. Jitoboh is a career 57% free throw shooter, and while the correlation between free throw shooting and three-point shooting can be contested, it’s worth noting in my opinion.
Offense is going to be very important to Jitoboh if he’s going to play a big role because right now the defense isn’t a strength, and it might be the biggest area where his weight, injury history, and conditioning is going to have an impact. Simply put, it’s very hard to be 300+ pounds and play defense at the high major level. Truthfully, Jitoboh actually is quite light on his feet for someone of that size, and his wide frame helped him hedge ball screens early in his time at Florida when that was the ball screen coverage of choice. However, even though he has been agile for someone of his size, it’s just that–for someone of his size, not the level that it needs to be at for someone tasked with guarding pick and roll in the SEC against some of the best ball handlers and scorers in the country.
Not only did Jitoboh struggle in space, but he also struggled to guard post ups which you would think would be a strength for someone of his size. However, post up play can be about craft and savviness–and despite being in his third year of college basketball last year, Jitoboh has only played a cumulative 366 minutes in his career. His ability to guard in the post will likely come around, but for now it’s a question mark.
On the positive side, Jitoboh has been impactful as a rim protector. Between his wingspan and physical stature, he’s a wall that has meant several downhill driving guards who have either bounced off him and forced up a wild layup attempt or simply had their shot swatted away. Jitoboh’s block percentage of 6.3% was 94th in the country last year and if he enters the season a bit lighter and more agile that number could climb even more.
An area where Jitoboh will have to become more impactful is when it comes to rebounding. Considering Jitoboh’s size you’d think he’d be dominant on the glass, and while he has been excellent when it comes to offensive rebounding he has been below average defensively–and that’s the more important category for the Gators entering this season. Generally speaking, a 15% defensive rebounding percentage is considered adequate for a center, though most coaches wouldn’t be happy with that output and would expect a lot more. In his three seasons of college basketball, Jitoboh has been at 13.3%, 13.1%, and and 14.1%. Is that terrible? No, but it’s an area where more needs to be expected of Jitoboh given his size and the role he has to play on this team.
When you look around high major basketball, there aren’t a lot of similar players to Jitoboh–6’11” centers pushing 300 pounds. That’s because, well, it’s hard for those players to exist in the current college basketball ecosystem. That means that for Jitoboh to have success he’ll be breaking current trends which isn’t easy to do. Players of this size are almost certainly going to struggle defensively, which means that they need to more than make up for that deficiency in other areas of the game–usually offensively and with rebounding. Jitoboh’s offense has been solid, but the rebounding has left something to be desired.
If Jitoboh’s offense stays about the same, he’ll need the defense and rebounding to improve.
Considering the defense will likely always be a bit of a problem, the offense improving even more and Jitoboh’s defensive rebounding improving to get to at least league average or ideally considerably better might be the more realistic path.
Jitoboh has a lot of fans and believers from fans as well as the current coaching staff and he’ll have plenty of opportunities to command a bigger role if he’s capable of doing so. Considering that he hasn’t been able to contribute fully over the last three years, if he provides big production off the bench he could end up being a major X-factor.