Strengths:

• Stands 6 feet 4.75 with a 6-foot-7.75 wingspan. Has a solid 8-foot-4 standing reach, and also plays bigger than that because of his strength. About 200 pounds and a strong lower body.

• Mashack was the best defensive player in college basketball this year and might be one of the best perimeter defenders on the planet right now. This is not an exaggeration. It was completely laughable that the SEC award voters gave Zakai Zeigler defensive player of the year in the league when Mashack clearly took all of the team's toughest assignments against elite players all year. Tennessee's entire defensive game plan was built around him being able to take out the opposing team's best player.

• He's an absolute stopper. Makes life miserable for whoever is in front of him, and can do it in a variety of ways. It starts at the point of attack. Mashack crawls right into your space and makes you feel his pressure immediately. Can stay obscenely tight to an offensive player. Puts the clamps on them. Seems to have an incredible sense of the scouting report for opposing players because he often beats them to the spot they're trying to get to. His anticipation is spectacular.

• Gets through screens at an elite level. Doesn't seem to get clipped on them all that often, and even when he does, has perfect fundamentals to recover back into the play by either turning and running a north-south or trailing. An absolute menace with his hands. He's constantly poking and prodding at the ball if he's up against a weaker ballhandler to make that player uncomfortable. Extremely disruptive. Great hand-eye coordination and will get deflections on the ball when someone throws a lazy pass. Has strong hands and will just rip the ball away from you.

• Can guard a significant number of positions with his size, athleticism, and strength. Best against lead guards and off-wings but has had success guarding up the lineup too because of how strong he is through his lower half. He'll beat you to the spot, then won't allow you to go through him. He will have no issue guarding up the lineup in switch situations.

• Also elite off the ball. His anticipation and communication is remarkable to watch in real time. Seems to know exactly what you're doing before you do it. Makes incredible scramble rotations out to shooters or to jump passing lanes. On the weak side, will always be in the right place to confuse the space between two offensive players as the driver looks for a kickouts. Tags in a timely manner.

• The numbers are just absurd. Opponents shot 34% against him this year, because of how excellent he is at timing his closeouts and contests. Opponents turned the ball over nearly three more times per 100 possessions when Mashack was on the court. He averaged 1.7 steals per game and blocked half a shot per game. He was just a ridiculous defensive playmaker.

• Offensively, there isn't much to discuss, but his shot isn't completely broken. Made 35.5% of his nearly 100 3-point attempts over the last two years. Not completely comfortable shooting from distance, and this will ultimately make or break his chances as an NBA player, but the release isn't all that bad even though it takes him a long while to get the shot off.

• Doesn't have the requisite ball skills to create his own shot in the NBA, but he has enough to at least maintain advantages he could create if the jumper ever starts falling. He's a smart cutter off the ball and, because he grew up handling the bal, has at least enough skill to drive in a straight line and make a passing read. Does a really good job crashing the offensive glass. Averaged 1.4 offensive boards per game just by consistently playing hard.

Areas for Improvement:

• The issue for Mashack is the offensive side of the floor. He doesn't have any way to consistently threaten the defense. He had a 11.6 usage rate this season, which is among the lowest I've ever seen for a potentially draftable prospect. It's easy to see why that's the case.

• First and foremost, Mashack is just not comfortable as a shooter. He only attempted 134 3s over his four-year, 137-game career at Tennessee, including just 1.5 3-point attempts per game this season. The release isn't bad, but it takes him forever to load into the shot. He has a rather large rhythm dip of the ball with a pause at the top of the mechanics, and defenders can lose out on him too easily. Made 35.5% over the last two years, but NBA defenders would have no issues sagging off him to cut off angles on the interior and getting a late closeout onto his shot. Has to work to speed up this release to give himself a chance to be valuable offensively.

• The reason the shot is so important is because the ball skills aren't quite there. Not a dynamic enough ballhandler to consistently break down collegiate defenses, let alone NBA ones. Played consistently as the fifth option on the court for Tennessee on offense and did not play with the ball in his hands often. Doesn't have much in the way of change-of-pace or change-of-direction dribbles that are sudden or get defenders off-balance. Enough to take advantage of positive situations created for him but won't be the one actually creating advantages out there.

• Essentially, he won't create advantages and is not a shooter. He took about one shot at the rim in half-court settings per game and made only 53.7% of those, a below-average mark. He's not wildly explosive vertically -- he had zero dunks this season. He will toss in an occasional floater. But the worry here is that he might be too limited to be anything other than a significant negative on offense whom defenses simply will not have to guard.

Summary:

The equation here is simple. If Mashack can't develop anything in the way of a reasonable jumper, he's going to end up in Europe and will be a winning basketball player for the next decade. But if he does develop a 3-point jump shot, he's almost certainly an NBA rotation player who is useful because of how absurdly good he is on defense. So, inevitably, the question centers on what the likelihood is that Mashack can develop a jump shot. I think it's fairly unlikely, but we're into the zone of players where we're probably hitting on a real NBA guy 5% of the time anyway. And if the jumper ever comes, it's hard to overemphasize how useful he would be because of how elite he is on defense. I'll probably be higher on Mashack than most if only because I can see a pathway toward viability here, even if it's unlikely.