On February 14, 2015, Derrick White broke a UCCS scoring record that already belonged to him.
He scored 35 points and collected 11 rebounds in a 90-75 win at Fort Lewis. The UCCS game report put him at 622 points for the season, one beyond the 621 he had scored the year before. There was still basketball left to play.
That is the detail I would begin with when revisiting White's college path. An evaluator who had formed an opinion a year earlier had new information to consider. The previous season's record had become something the same player could improve upon.
White's eventual move from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs to the University of Colorado is often compressed into a jump between competition levels. The dated records let us slow it down. He was building a college career in Colorado Springs before he played in Boulder, and those games deserve attention in their own right.
A Division II season with substantial work in it
UCCS was competing in NCAA Division II. Colorado's biography of White records a 25.8-point average in his final UCCS season, along with 5.2 assists per game. He helped the Mountain Lions win their first Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference tournament championship and reach the second round of the 2015 Division II NCAA tournament.
The assists are useful beside the scoring. They keep an evaluator from asking only whether White could make baskets against a particular level of opposition. He was also supplying teammates. The total cannot describe the difficulty of those passes or establish how they would translate. It gives someone reviewing the actual games another question to investigate.
There is a corresponding danger in romanticizing the lower level. A large scoring average does not automatically predict success against different size, speed or schemes. White's record made him worth examining. It did not eliminate the need to examine him.
For the present-day program landscape, CBR's Colorado Division II directory gives readers a place to begin. It should be read as a current directory, separate from White's 2014-15 season. The historical question is what his work at UCCS made possible next.
The evaluation had another season to answer
White sat out the 2015-16 season after transferring, Colorado's biography records. His Division I playing season came in 2016-17. The waiting year belongs in the chronology because a move between schools did not place him immediately in the next set of games.
For that Colorado season, the university records averages of 18.1 points and 4.4 assists. He earned first-team All-Pac-12 and the league's All-Defensive Team recognition. The numbers changed with the setting. The contribution remained substantial.
That is stronger evidence than a confident prediction made at the time of the transfer. White had now played a season at the new level. A person evaluating his career could compare what he had been asked to do and what he produced, while keeping the differences between the two teams in view.
The Colorado program page provides the current recruiting destination. White's historical record belongs to the Pac-12 season of 2016-17.
I would be particularly interested in the combination of playmaking and defensive recognition. Those details suggest questions that pure scoring comparisons can miss. What work could he perform when he was not finishing a possession? Which parts of his game kept him useful across assignments? Answering those questions in detail would require a proper film review. The honors and totals provide reasons to perform one.
Leave room for a changed opinion
There is no shame in having incomplete information about a young player. There is a problem with refusing better information when it arrives.
White's records give an evaluator several dates on which to reconsider. The new UCCS scoring mark arrived in February 2015. The final Division II season supplied a larger body of work. The Colorado season supplied results against a different set of opponents. A judgment made before those events should be allowed to change because those events happened.
That is the standard our own coverage should face. CBR's Asa Montgomery ranking article is about a later evaluation of a current young forward. The comparison is a habit of updating, not a claim that Montgomery will follow White's career. Each player deserves an assessment built from his own evidence.
An old ranking can be useful as a record of what people thought at the time. It becomes harmful when it is treated as a ceiling that new work cannot change. The evaluator's reputation should not matter more than getting the player right.
The February 2015 report remains a good place to stop. White had passed his own previous mark, UCCS had won another game and the season was still underway. An evaluator who had last checked a year earlier had a reason to open the next report.
