Liberty will welcome several newcomers to its 2024-25 men’s basketball team. We will breakdown the addition of each one, continuing this series today with a look at Cedarville transfer Jayvon Maughmer. Be sure to go back and check out our breakdown of Arkansas Tech transfer guard Taelon Peter, if you missed it.
Liberty has added some more firepower through the transfer portal in the form of 6’6 wing Jayvon Maughmer. He comes from Cedarville and has shown the capability to score at a high level, improving his numbers in each of his four years at the school. Maughmer averaged 20.0 points, 3.0 assists and 5.5 rebounds per game in his latest season while shooting 51.9% from the floor and 40.8% from three in 35 games. His play was awarded with G-MAC Player of the Year and NCCAA All-American first team honors as he led the Yellow Jackets to a 23-12 record and an NCCAA National Championship.
Continuing with the trend of acquiring high level spacing threats, Liberty basketball has found another guy in Maughmer that showed he could knock down shots from outside at a high clip, with over a third of his shot attempts being threes. He showed versatility in his long range shot making, converting 41.1% of his pull up threes and 42.7% of his catch and shoot threes.
I came away impressed with Maughmer’s film of possessions where he ran the pick and roll. He navigated screens and switches with patience and could attack downhill after getting a step on his man. His knack for handling the ball at his size translated well to these situations and often resulted in him finishing strong or rising up and sinking jumpers. The ball transitions from his dribble to his jumper smoothly and in one clean motion within these actions, giving me visions of him being able to be involved in the screen game with Zach Cleveland or invert that to pop out as the screener.
Though he seems to prefer being a perimeter oriented player, he does not hesitate when a window opens and he can go through the chest of his defender. He made 63.4% of his shots taken at the rim and got to this area at a good rate. Jayvon also showed off a nice runner he can get to quickly once he finds himself in the middle of the floor. Once there with the ball, he is decisive in making a decision.
He showed good efficiency when posting up (59.1% on shots in the post) and good footwork down low to take advantage of smaller players. I am wondering how much this inside-outside offensive skill set will be utilized, but either way he can contribute.
I would imagine that he will be used initially as a spot up player with the skill and size to play a three-and-D role well immediately and slowly gain more usage to create and play off of other guards. He has the tools to be switchable and fill in nicely alongside the current personnel that the Flames have. Knocking down shots off of handoffs and screens when given open windows is invaluable.
He had to playmake for both himself and his teammates at times at Cedarville, so I believe he should be able to keep the flow of what Coach McKay wants to do. His size and perimeter skills are an exciting addition to a roster that is shaping up to be different and juiced up relative to what we’ve seen in recent years in terms of player personnel. A wing with decent size and shooting ability is a hot commodity, and it would appear that Liberty has found one here.
