Much Adou About Thiero
A Razorback Reels with clips from Pacific and Little Rock explores historic start
In Act IV, Scene I of Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice tells Benedick, “I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.” Five games into the 2024-2025 season, and Arkansas Razorbacks fans feel the exact same way about Adou Thiero.
He checks a lot of boxes that a fan favorite needs. Stolen from a rival? Check! Highlight dunks? Check! Impacts winning? Publisher’s Clearing House-style massive check.
While you can caveat everything I’ll say from here out with the fact that it is early in the season, Theiro is on pace for the most productive season in Arkansas Basketball history1 (at least per one stat). Thiero currently has a Box Plus/Minus of 14.3. That is 4.9 points higher than the next closest player (Mason Jones had a BPM of 9.4 in 2019-2020).
And before Kentucky fans pop up spewing their Bluegrass nonsense, Thiero’s current figure would be good enough for fourth all-time for the Wildcats. He’d be tied with a pretty decent player: former number one overall pick Karl-Anthony Towns.
So how does Thiero get to a figure like that? Let’s roll the tape!
Thiero turns defense into offense
Here is how the Pacific game started:
Thiero gets in the passing lane and then turns on the jets to take it coast-to-coast. Pacific took a quick timeout to stop the bleeding. Surely that fixed things and settled the Tigers down.
And here’s what Thiero did immediately after the timeout:
Arkansas came out of the timeout with some pressure at the timeline. Thiero picked the ballhandler’s pocket and then beats two Tigers down the floor for a jam. Hard to win on an opposing floor with the home team Thiero hounding you like that.
It didn’t just happen to Pacific. Little Rock wasn’t much safer against Theiro’s defensive intensity.
If the season ended today, Theiro would be first all-time for the Razorbacks in steal percentage and tied for third all-time in steals per game. It’s only been five games, but Thiero is having an absolute monster defensive campaign. He’s no small part of why KenPom has the Hogs ranked ninth nationally in defensive efficiency.
Easy looks lead to easy buckets
Thiero’s ability to force live ball turnovers and get out in transition is also impacting his offensive stats. He’s shooting 67 percent from the floor and carrying an effective field goal percentage of 70.9 percent. That efg% would also be the best in program history if the season ended today. Troy was the only game where he shot below 70 percent on twos.
It’s easy to shoot such a high percentage when your shot diet consists of looks like this:
It doesn’t just happen in transition, though. Part of what drives Theiro’s offensive output is a clear understanding of Calipari’s offense. He knows what the dribble-drive offense calls for and makes quick, decisive decisions.
On one end of the floor, we Theiro played an active defensive possession. On the other end, he caught the ball in the slot, noticed a driving lane left open by a slow rotation from the defense, and immediately attacked it. There isn’t much the defense can do to recover when he is that decisive.
While he is only shooting 33 percent from three, you can live with it because his shots mostly look like this:
Theiro runs a dribble handoff with DJ Wagner and pops into open space. He doesn’t hesitate when he gets the ball and knocks down the three.
Key Takeaways
Thiero is strong, fast, and decisive. As a result, the game is coming easy to him on both ends of the floor right now. It is impossible to say whether he can keep up his historic pace, but it bodes well for the Razorbacks if he can. If he does, it will be one of the greatest statistical seasons in Razorbacks history.
Box Plus/Minus at the college level dates back to the 2010 season.