Trotter's Trends: Auburn's Keyshawn Hall might be best transfer scorer ever; early WAB lessons we've learned

Auburn's Keyshawn Hall is a drifter. From UNLV to George Mason to UCF to Auburn, Hall doesn't stay in one place for too long.

He's also concocting one of the best offensive seasons that we've ever seen from a transfer. Last week, Hall torched Texas A&M for 32 points on Tuesday and added … 32 more points in Saturday's romp over No. 17 Arkansas.

New offense? New coach? New scheme? New home? Doesn't matter. These buckets travel. 

Year after year, Hall just scores. Hall's nickname is "Big Guard," and this Big Guard has now scored at least 13 points in 59 of the last 76 games that he's played.

But this year is something different. Hall is averaging 21.7 points, which is good for 12th-best in the country, with some of the best efficiency marks around. Hall is shooting 45% from 3-point range. That's easily the best of his career. He's converting over 60% of his layups. Again, easily the best of his career. He is on pace for a positive assist-to-turnover ratio … for the first time in his career.

Hall must know how to fill out the transfer portal documents in his sleep, and he could certainly become the best scorer the portal has ever produced. We'll see what former TCU, Tulsa, Memphis and now Kansas State product PJ Haggerty has to say about that, but Hall is making a surge towards cementing himself in Auburn history.

KenPom.com's database goes back to 2001-02. Hall's current 131.6 offensive rating is the best mark for a high-usage player in the last 25 seasons of Auburn basketball. This is the most a Tiger has scored in a single season since the mid-90s when Wesley Person — Auburn's third all-time leading scorer — averaged north of 22 points. Hall is well on his way to posting one of the 10-best scoring seasons that Auburn basketball has ever had.

Auburn single-season scoring average records

• 1. John Mengelt, 1970-71: 28.4 
• 2. John Mengelt, 1969-70: 26.8
• 3. Mike Mitchell, 1977-78: 24.9
• 4. Lee DeFore, 1965-66: 23.7
• 5. Wesley Person, 1993-94: 22.2
• 6. Chuck Person, 1984-85: 22.0
• 7. Eddie Johnson, 1973-74: 21.8
• 8. Keyshawn Hall, 2025-26: 21.7
• 9. Chuck Person, 1985-86: 21.5
• 10. Eddie Johnson, 1974-75: 20.9 

Not too bad for a former 285-pound high schooler who quit hooping to play Fortnite.

Five Wins Above Bubble takeaways

The NCAA's seeding committee will use Wins Above Bubble (dubbed WAB) for the second year in a row. WAB is all about the resume. What have you done on the court? WAB measures what the average bubble team would have done, and each team is given a boost or a reduction based on the outcome. Missouri can beat Bethune-Cookman by eight or 80; the final score does not matter. 

How is this calculated? Simple math. The average bubble team is given a 95% chance of beating Bethune-Cookman at home. WAB is calculated from the gap between the projected win percentage and the actual win number of 1.0. Since Missouri won, it was given 0.05 WAB for that victory. If it had lost, it would have been a -0.95 WAB in the ledger.

Bracketology: Wisconsin jumps into NCAA Tournament field after upsetting Michigan; Vanderbilt a new No. 1 seed

David Cobb

Makes sense, right? 

On to the takeaways.

1. What's the best WAB win so far?

Wisconsin going into Michigan on Saturday and knocking off the previously unbeaten Wolverines earned the Badgers +0.96 WAB. The average bubble team is given a 4% chance of going into big, bad Michigan and winning that game. 

Wisconsin was hovering around 0.0 in WAB before Saturday. That win alone vaulted the Badgers up to 37th nationally with +1.00 WAB. Legitimately season-changing win on the court and for the resume.

I would highly recommend checking out wabwatch.com to track your team's Wins Above Bubble for each game this year.

2. Who has the best resume, so far?

Michigan might be atop KenPom and Arizona might be atop the AP Poll, but Nebraska is the No. 1 team in the NCAA's WAB tool. The undefeated Huskers have accumulated the most impactful collection of victories this season.

In total, Nebraska has added +3.1 WAB to its ledger in the last month, with those road victories over Illinois, Ohio State and Indiana doing the heavy lifting. 

Top 10 in WAB on Jan. 13, per the NCAA

1. Nebraska, 5.45
2. UConn, 5.38
3. Arizona, 5.30
4. Duke, 5.23
5. Vanderbilt, 5.11
6. Iowa State, 4.77
7. Michigan, 4.61
8. Purdue, 4.52
9. BYU, 4.16
10. Gonzaga, 4.00

3. Road wins are gold

SMU is a great example of this. The Mustangs' 97-83 win over No. 17 North Carolina earlier this month earned rave reviews from every corner as Andy Enfield finally got his first, true "signature" win at SMU.

But for WAB purposes, that home win over UNC is the … third-best victory of the season for the upstart Ponies. SMU didn't make headlines for going on the road and beating Mississippi State in overtime, but it earned +0.5 in WAB for that dub. Nine days later, it earned a +0.54 boost in WAB for knocking off Texas A&M on the road. Beating UNC (+0.49 in WAB) is a great win, but roadkills are everything in WAB. 

4. Notable WAB whiffs

• Kentucky is No. 35 in the NET, but WAB isn't a big fan of the resume so far. Kentucky sits at No. 51 nationally with a -0.05 WAB. The 'Cats would be on the outside looking in for the NCAA Tournament if the season ended today. Thankfully, it doesn't.
• Beating Kansas at home on Saturday was a major shot in the arm, but WAB isn't real high on West Virginia's resume. The Mountaineers have a -1.37 WAB, which ranks 80th nationally. That's largely because West Virginia has not won a game away from home this season.
• Losing home games to Bowling Green (-0.84 WAB) and Seton Hall (-0.62 WAB) is dragging Kansas State down heavily. Jerome Tang's bunch sits 75th in WAB.

5. Arrow pointing up for the good mid-majors

It's hard for good mid-majors to get Quad 1 opportunities on the schedule. No one really wants to play a Miami, Ohio, who looks like the best team in the MAC. So, what did Travis Steele do to counteract this? He scheduled four true road games in non-conference play against Air Force, UNC Asheville, Eastern Kentucky and Wright State. The Redhawks swept that four-game road series. Oh, and they are off to a perfect 5-0 start in conference play with road wins over Toledo, Bowling Green and Ball State. 

Those road wins can help explain why Miami (Ohio) is No. 32 nationally with a +1.26 WAB, despite not playing a single Quad 1 game. Tennessee has played seven Quad 1 games, but the Vols are 2-5 against the top competition. Tennessee might be 26 spots ahead of the RedHawks in the NET rankings, but they are slightly behind in WAB, largely because they are 7-0 on the road and Tennessee is 0-3 in true roadies.

Winning games away from home is essential. The RedHawks' smart strategy of stacking a ton of road games to try and boost the resume little by little, because no high-majors want to play them, is working. More likely than not, the Redhawks will still need the automatic bid from the MAC Tournament to dance, but they are doing what they can to position themselves for an at-large case. WAB, not the NET where the Redhawks rate just 53rd nationally, is shaping up to be its top resume-boosting metric on the team sheet for the committee. 

One undervalued offense and one undervalued defense

Some numbers are fake at this point in the season. Wisconsin (wow, the Badgers keep coming up today) is a great example of this. The Badgers entered Saturday with the No. 64-rated offense, per KenPom. After five offensive clunkers, that rating made sense. But it's helpful to keep in mind some preseason priors.

We know John Blackwell is an awesome guard. We know Nick Boyd is a hooper. We know Nolan Winter can step out and drill treys, even though the big fella had a cold-shooting spurt for the first two months. In the preseason, I had Wisconsin on the short list of teams that could realistically finish with a top-10 offense. 

For a day, the Badgers showed just how potent they can be. Wisconsin splashed 15 triples, and the dynamic duo of Boyd and Blackwell combined for 48 points and nine dimes in the upset win over No. 2 Michigan. Wisconsin's offense posted 1.26 points per possession against a Michigan defense that had been one of the elite units this season. 

That, of course, pushed me down a rabbit hole to find more undervalued units that haven't played up to their standard yet, but clearly have the personnel to be scary.

Wake Forest's offense: The Demon Deacons currently rank 89th in offensive efficiency, but I do not see that on tape. Wake Forest is a tough cover. Offensive coordinator Nick Friedman has this group pushing it in transition at a sky-high clip, getting defenses into rotation and generating a ton of clean looks. I'm bullish that this offense can be a much more menacing unit as all these new faces figure out the intricacies of this scheme. 

Sophomore wing Juke Harris has been awesome as a tough shotmaker, but there are also just so many other pieces on this roster who should get better with time. We've seen plenty of those mid-season surges from transfers, and Wake Forest's roster is full of transfers in a new place who are trying to learn a new offense. That takes time.

Keep an eye on point guard Nate Calmese and big man Cooper Schwieger, specifically. Calmese's speed and playmaking is massive, and if the shot-making ticks up, watch out. If Schwieger can find his 3-point stroke, that changes the calculus for the offense, too. I think Wake Forest can easily vault into the top-50 in offensive efficiency.

San Diego State's defense: San Diego State's defense was supposed to be awesome this year. Instead, it ranks 36th nationally in effectiveness. That's fine for normal teams. Not for San Diego State who has been a defensive juggernaut for a good chunk of two decades. This is shaping up to be the worst defense for San Diego State since 2005.

But I genuinely think the numbers are being skewed because in late November, San Diego State caught Michigan at a horrible time and lost to the Wolverines 94-54.

If you remove Michigan's 23-for-35 showing on 2-pointers, SDSU's 2-point defense would rank 18th nationally, not 51st. 

The personnel can still be overwhelming in this scheme. Brian Dutcher has this jumbo lineup with Elzie Harrington, Miles Byrd, Reese Dixon-Waters, Miles Heide and Magoon Gwath that has my attention. Those five guys did not play together against Michigan, but San Diego State's defensive rating is a sparkling 86.3 with that lineup pairing.  It makes sense. That's three guards who are 6-5 or taller. Byrd is a phenomenal multi-positional defender. Gwath and Heide are huge and mobile. 

Yes, this SDSU defense isn't up to par right now with previous iterations, but I do not think it will stick.

That Michigan game is cooking the books, and some of these new lineups are terrifying.