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Nov 26, 2024; Fort Myers, Florida, USA; Siena Saints guard Gavin Doty (14) is guarded by Jacksonville Dolphins guard Chris Arias (1) in the first half at Suncoast Credit Union Arena. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images | Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images
On the last day of January 2025, freshman Gavin Doty played 36 minutes and scored 19 points for Siena against Marist on national television, but he didn’t play the last 2:45. Doty hit his head hard trying to take a charge on Red Foxes big man Jackson Price, and had to sub out of what was a competitive game. Siena lost 72-67.
It was a critical inflection point in Siena’s season, as the Saints fell to 4-6 in the MAAC.
Two days later, Doty returned to the floor as though he’d never hit his head. He scored 19 points, grabbed six rebounds, and had four steals in 38 minutes. He led Siena’s press as the Saints forced 19 Quinnipiac turnovers to knock the Bobcats out of a tie for first place, coming from 13 points down in the second half to win 84-75.
Doty’s game has grown since then, but I don’t feel there’s a game, or a story, that better epitomizes the new Syracuse player. After winning the MAAC Championship in 2026, head coach Gerry McNamara said that Doty is “a psycho” and “as close to me as anybody I’ve ever coached.”
The easiest way to explain that is a clip from the second half of that very Quinnipiac game.
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He starts by scoring in the middle of the Quinnipiac zone, then goes to the corner to trap the point guard in the full-court press. When the Bobcats passed out of the trap, Doty sprinted back down the floor and ripped the ball from the ball handler, sneaking around his back and poking it out. Doty couldn’t finish the layup on the other end while getting hit, and neither could his teammate. QU got the ball on a tie-up after Doty hit the deck. On the inbound, Doty guarded the ball, got a hand on it, and then eventually stole it and drew a foul.
I think a lot of the time, when people talk about hustle plays, they say that they’re not reflected on the stat sheet, or that they don’t jump off the page. And there are certainly subsects of hustle plays that don’t show up on stat-sheets – Doty had one in the second half of the Quinnipiac game where he forced a bad inbound and then threw the ball off of a Bobcat player as they were falling out of bounds to force a turnover – but they certainly do jump off the screen.
When you look at a player who scores 18 points per game, you don’t think about the hustle plays, but having followed Doty’s career at Siena from the start, he made the hustle plays in a loud way. I’ve used the phrase “throwing his body around” about 100 times when talking about him over the past two seasons, and I’ll use it again. He wasn’t afraid to do it.
Doty was a notable local product at Fulton High School drawing Division I interest. He was considering going to prep school after playing his 17U summer with Albany City Rocks on the EYBL circuit in 2024. McNamara and the Siena staff – now all at Syracuse minus Brian Beaury – decided to take him on after Peach Jam, and while he didn’t arrive on campus until just before school started.
“By the third day, he was everywhere,” McNamara said after winning the MAAC Championship. “I was like ‘Geez, he’s gotten like five offensive rebounds every day in this segment.”
He wasn’t part of Siena’s rotation early in the year, but forced McNamara’s hand. A strong performance against Miami OH in Jacksonville and against Cornell in Ithaca had him in the rotation by January. And his spot was cemented with more big games and Marcus Jackson’s injury.
It was the hustle plays that got him on the court initially, but that’s far from any sort of summation of his game and what he’ll bring to Syracuse. And it’s not even the steal numbers that will jump off the page when you look at Doty’s profile. It’s merely part of his game, rather than his entire game.
Doty took 129 jump shots off the dribble in 2025-26, the sixth most in the MAAC and he had the second highest field goal percentage in the conference on those shots. Albeit, most of them were two-pointers, and his effective field goal percentage (among players with 100 attempts) was 5th out of 15. Merely 16% of his OTD jumpers were threes, which was 14th out of 15 only ahead of his teammate, Justice Shoats.
It’s worth taking a look at what Doty likes to do with the ball in his hands to create these jump shots. He gets to his spots in different ways, using a ball screen or without one, but always is able to recenter his body and find himself under control even if his body is flailing out in different directions. Doty may look like he’s playing out of control, but he’s so comfortable in that aspect of the game that he’s really not.
I joked that he led the country in shots made while falling to the ground, so I made a compilation, but when watching the film back, what you see is him staying on balance more often than not in these situations.
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He will spin move on anybody. Doty loves going to his spin move to get him from left to right, and he can use it in different ways. He’ll bump you and spin off of you to create an explosive right-hand drive. He’ll touch paint and spin with his dribble for a right-hand pull-up. And he’ll even jump stop, spin left to right, and make a fader.
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What’s so impressive about Doty is that he seemingly never turns the ball over despite dribbling himself into so many conundrums. He had the second lowest turnover rate of anybody in college basketball playing more than 40% of the minutes and holding a usage rate higher than 23. And first place is Riley Fox, who is a terrific offensive player, but mostly a standstill shooter for Yale. So no player in the sport had a lower turnover rate on his usage with even 30 of what Synergy is considering “drives.” Doty had 119.
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While the left-handed drives can end in spin moves, he’s more prolific driving to his right, where he’s more likely to go straight into contact and draw a foul. Doty is a terrific foul shooter, making 86% of his attempts last year, including 27-29 (93%) in the MAAC Tournament run.
He plays so much of his game as a downhill mover, but often fades away when he gets to the basket.
On pick-and-rolls, he was the secondary ball handler for Siena, but was very efficient, ranking in the 85th percentile with 1.060 points per possession. While he’s not known for his outside shooting, Doty attempted more and more throughout the year. After taking just 53 as a freshman, Doty attempted 141 threes in his sophomore campaign.
Of those 141 threes, 84 of them came in conference play, and he made 35.7% of them. By the end of the season, teams weren’t as content to just leave him open on the perimeter. In the nine games to end the season before facing Duke, he attempted just eight unguarded catch-and-shoot threes, a near 30% drop in attempts per game from before that stretch.
It’s because he was making them. He was shooting over 40% on spot-up threes from the end of December through the beginning of February, and it became a bigger part of the scouting report. It’s not the cleanest release, but from seeing him in person as many times as I have over the past two years, I think it got cleaner over the course of the season this year.
And just like his drives, he can center himself from the balance perspective in a bunch of different ways to make the shot cleaner for himself. He can land with his front foot forward on deeper shots that are a little more slingshot-y than his typical soft touch, but he’s made it work.
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Doty is such a good driver that you want him putting the ball on the floor rather than pulling up from beyond the arc, but he did add some stepback flair to his game, sealing the MAAC title with a deep three.
He’s a put your head down and get to your spot type of driver. His assist rates aren’t high because he’s moving with such vigor in trying to get to his spot, and once he does, that shot is going up.
On the defensive side of the ball, the standout trait is once again activity. He’ll fight to deny dribble handoffs to shooters when he’s guarding off the ball, and he’ll fight his way over screens against scoring threats.
Doty has an edge to him where he loves to tightly guard the ball, but where he truly thrives is coming off of broken plays on either end of the floor. Whether he’s the one breaking them, or they’re already broken.
His KenPom closest statistical comps aren’t even all that similar to him, so Doty is a pretty unique player, which you can tell by watching him. And I think he actually scales up fairly well. Will he be as efficient in the ACC? No. But he’ll score a bunch of points pretty consistently while giving energy plays for the Orange.
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