The Iowa State Cyclones men’s basketball team has a few new faces in the rotation this season.

Their Sweet 16 squad from 2025-26 lost two stars, Joshua Jefferson and Milan Momcilovic, but in a surprise turn of events, they do have Tamin Lipsey back for one more year. Coming into the 2026-27 season, it was no surprise that everyone thought he would be the team’s most impactful player.

One of the best to ever suit up for Iowa State, Lipsey makes an impact in every facet of the game. As a fifth-year player, he has seen everything there is to see in men’s college basketball. However, in the early going of the season, he hasn’t been the most impactful player.

Instead, that title has been bestowed upon one of the transfers, guard Ryan Prather Jr. After coming off the bench in the season opener against the Memphis Tigers, he has been in the starting lineup the last two games and producing at an incredibly high level.

Ryan Prather has best Net Point Metric on Iowa State

Over at ESPN’s Bracketology, shared by Joe Lunardi, he introduced the net point metric that ESPN Analytics uses into his exercise. It measures which player is the most impactful on the team’s scoring margin.

Before the team’s game against the Southern University Jaguars, Tre Singleton was the most impactful player with +6.2 Net Points. That number will only go up after he recorded +7.9 Net Points in an 84-47 victory. The only player who had a higher Net Points total was Ryan Prather Jr. with +10.7, which pushed him fractions of a point ahead for the team lead.

Singleton, a sophomore who went his freshman year with the Northwestern Wildcats, had the tall task of replacing Jefferson in the lineup at the 4-spot, and he has surpassed expectations in the early going.

The same can be said about Prather Jr., who transferred to the Cyclones from the Robert Morris Colonials this offseason. More regarded for his offensive ability, it is his defense that has stood out the most in the early going.

His +7.0 dNET was the highest among all players in the game against the Jaguars and was an easy choice as the game’s MVP. He has recorded a team-high seven steals thus far.

Thus far this season, Prather Jr. is averaging 13 points per game on an efficient shooting split of .478/.467/.769, providing the starting lineup with some much-needed floor spacing, knocking down 2.3 3-pointers per game.

He is helping take pressure off Jamarion Batemon to replace the long-range shooting of Momcilovic and keep the offense humming.