Why Mikel Brown Jr.'s 45-point shooting outburst felt inevitable

Louisville freshman guard Mikel Brown Jr. had a record-setting night on Monday, dropping 45 points, including 10 threes, in the Cardinals' dominating 118-77 beatdown of NC State.

Brown was 14-for-23 from the field,10-for-16 from three, and added nine rebounds, two assists and three steals inside the KFC Yum! Center. Brown's 45 points were an ACC freshman record (Cooper Flagg's 42-points last season vs. Notre Dame). He also tied Wes Unseld's 59-year Louisville scoring record (45 against Georgetown College on Dec. 1, 1967).

Brown came into the game shooting just 26.9% from behind the three-point line, so most college fans didn't know what he was capable of from behind the arc. If the NC State defensive game-planning was based on numbers from this season, then neither did they.

As for NBA scouts, if they didn't know Brown could shoot, then they weren't doing the proper due diligence. Throughout high school, Brown's shooting has been one of his best and most natural assets.

Brown's shooting touch is soft. The mechanics are clean and repeatable, and the numbers have backed it up. As a junior at Overtime Elite, Brown made 38% of his threes on over six attempts per game. In his following grassroots season (2025), with Team Loaded on the 3SSB circuit, Brown made over 41% of his threes on just under a whopping eight attempts per game. That same summer, he made 35% in the FIBA U18 Americas, again on just under six attempts per game, and the fact that USA Basketball allowed him to maintain that type of volume is a very clear indication of their faith in his stroke. 

There's not much verifiable data available from Brown's senior season at DME Academy, but this past summer at the FIBA U19 World Championships, he made 48% of his threes, again on six attempts per game.

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So, for those who know Brown the best, Monday's outburst wasn't totally unprecedented. Actually, an uptick in his shooting was probable, if not predictable.

So, what's been the disconnect for Brown and shooting up to this point?

Well, that's somewhat speculative, but my hypothesis would be rooted in three main variables. First is the discomfort that comes from any back injury, especially one that lingers. Brown has missed eight of Louisville's 24 games this season due to the injury, coming back on Jan. 24.

 Second, there is the quality of the shots that Brown has taken. Candidly, he's still launching relatively low percentage threes, sometimes at especially inopportune times. Its the type of threes that we typically see eliminated from a player's game when they transition from high school to college. 

Third, and potentially most notable, are some very subtle fluctuations I've noticed in Brown's release, ironically more so from the free-throw line than within the flow of the game. There's nothing glaringly wrong, but there have been times when his release has lacked its normal fluidity. It has even fluctuated from one rep to another, presumably with Brown noticing it himself and then self-correcting.

This actually isn't totally unprecedented. Four years ago, Brown was a 5-foot-9 high school freshman. Despite his small stature, he was already on the national radar as a prospect. I can vividly remember this baby-faced underclassman, who looked too young to even be in high school, but had this incredibly advanced skill-set and a virtually pure early shooting release, albeit one that came up from his chest because he was still so physically immature. 

As Brown began to sprout up, his shot gradually changed with his body. He continued to make shots, as the aforementioned numbers document, but his release point evolved, and there were some very minor growing pains along the way. I can remember one such example at USA Basketball trials two summers ago. Brown struggled to make shots through the first two days. True to his reputation, he got up extra work on a side-court between practices, and by the end of the third day, he had caught fire.

That process sounds very similar to what Pat Kelsey detailed after Monday's game. "I literally said this, and I'm not lying: 'Mikel, your process is great. Nobody works harder than you. You can't live or die on every miss. If you just keep staying consistent, you're going to have a game where you make, like ten threes.'"

Well, turns out that's exactly what happened. We've seen it before, and if NBA scouts have done their due diligence, then they have too.

It's why the CBS Sports NBA Draft Big Board won't be making any major corrections this week. In other words, Brown didn't make a huge drop when he was struggling (and injured), only now to make a dramatic jump back. He's stayed in relatively the same place (most recently mocked at No. 7 last week) because we had the context to know that the shooting was inevitably coming.