Notre Dame could be getting a big bump in scoring next season. Yale’s Paul Atkinson Jr., the defending Ivy League Player of the Year, will join the Irish as a graduate transfer. The Ivy League opted not to play this season because of COVID-19, so this will be Atkinson’s first real basketball action in almost two years. He figures to fill the gaps that will be left by graduating seniors Juwan Durham and Nikola Djogo.
During the 2019-20 season, the 6-foot-10, 220-pound Atkinson shattered previous career highs with 17.6 points and 7.3 rebounds a game. He never scored fewer than 10 points in a game, and he also led the Ivy League by shooting 63.0 percent from the field. In fact, he’s the conference’s career field-goal percentage leader (66.1 percent) going back to the 1985-86 season. It will be very interesting to see if his game does just as well in the ACC and with more opportunities against other power conference teams.