When you think of Cincinnati Bearcats point guards you think of scrappy, heady players who make plays and protect the ball at all costs. Those are the attributes that come up when you think of when you think of that position you don’t think of three point marksmen and that isn’t a slight to the guys who have come before, but nine times out of 10 you know what you are going to get with a Cincinnati point guard in the Cronin era. Just go google search Deonta Vaughn, Cashmere Wright and Troy Caupain, they were shot makers and creators, but not dead eye shooters from deep.
The history of the program in the Cronin era is what makes the development of Justin Jenifer from deep intriguing and something I wanted to talk about. The senior out of Baltimore, Maryland is best known for not turning over the ball at an astounding clip. He averages 3.4 assists per game, but has a 5.2 assist to 1 turnover ratio, if you go by those numbers he’s almost taking two full games to accumulate one turnover. Can you say floor general?
Jenifer is currently the American Athletic Conference leading three point shooter percentage wise, not that isn’t an error with hard work and changing things in his shooting mechanics this has been made possible. (Shoutout to Bearcat Journal’s Justin Berg having a one on one with the senior to go over his mechanics) Right now he is shooting 46.2% from behind the arc, he is currently leading by .031% and guess who is third in conference? Jarron Cumberland! He is only shooting 3.9 attempts a game, but knocking down 1.8 of them so he is pretty close to being 50% on his attempts, if you round up (inserts laugh). He is 13th in the conference in makes per game so the prove is in the pudding showing he isn’t just jacking up shots, but when he does let it fly it has a good chance of going in.
So far this season he has career highs in minutes played at 25.5 per game, field goal percentage at 45.7%, assists with 3.4 per game, steals with .7 per game game and points at 9.1 per game.
To see the transformation from the guard has been great, a lot of people counted him out when he struggled to make footing his freshman and sophomore years and he had an easy out to transfer when Cane Broome came on board last season, but he kept his head down and grinded. Being a city point guard he had to adjust his game, if you saw his style he was more run and gun and a chance taker early in his career, but with hard work he has morphed into a floor general and shot maker.
Jenifer has stayed the course and he is honestly one of the most underrated point guards in the country #BearcatNation needs to put some respeck (spelled wrong on purpose, look up Birdman on The Breakfast Club interview to understand the reference) on his name and enjoy the last few months with him.
