The 2023-24 freshman class in men's college basketball doesn't have anything close to a Zion Williamson or an Anthony Davis taking the sport by storm, but there are a select few who have made a big early impression.

Our top 10 freshmen are ranked based on a combination of individual production and team success. But unlike with National Player of the Year rankings where it takes a considerable amount of team success to even be legitimately considered, it's much more of a perk than a prerequisite here. Team success can provide a rankings boost to players from Baylor and Kentucky without penalizing freshmen thriving for the likes of Harvard and Tulsa.

One thing that doesn't factor into the rankings, though, is NBA draft stock. It might be mentioned where applicable, but by no means should this be viewed as some kind of draft big board of top freshmen.

One last observation before we dive in: While many have dubbed this another Year of the Big Man, that doesn't apply on the freshman front. Everyone in our top 10 is either a guard or a wing, and the only regular shot-blockers even remotely considered were honorable mentions Yves Missi, Baye Ndongo and JT Toppin. Even though he has only played in three games thus far, Kentucky's Aaron Bradshaw may well end up being the unanimous freshman big man of the year.

Statistics current through the start of play Tuesday, Dec. 19.

Honorable Mentions: Elliot Cadeau (North Carolina), Aden Holloway (Auburn), Jared McCain (Duke), Yves Missi (Baylor), Milan Momcilovic (Iowa State), Baye Ndongo (Georgia Tech), Dedan Thomas Jr. (UNLV), JT Toppin (New Mexico), DJ Wagner (Kentucky)

10. Cody Williams, Colorado

Season Stats: 14.0 PPG, 3.6 RPG, 2.0 APG, 0.9 SPG, 60.0% 3PT

Cody Williams missed one game early in the year with a lower leg injury and has missed Colorado's last two games with a wrist injury.

It's a shame, because the highly touted freshman was really starting to take off.

In the six games played between the absences, Williams scored at least 17 points on four occasions, including back-to-back 21-point performances against Colorado State and Pepperdine the last time we saw him.

The 6'8" wing-forward has done more ball-handling than we were expecting before the season began, but he has done so with an impressive degree of efficiency—not from an "assist-to-turnover ratio" perspective, where he has 14 of each, but from a "creating good looks for himself" perspective with a field-goal percentage of 62.3.

When healthy, there's not much he can't do. With any luck, Williams will be back in time for the Jan. 4 showdown with Arizona, which would provide an intriguing head-to-head matchup with Pelle Larsson.

9. PJ Haggerty, Tulsa

Season Stats: 16.9 PPG, 4.7 RPG, 2.9 APG, 2.4 SPG

PJ Haggerty appeared in six games last season at TCU before taking a redshirt and transferring to Tulsa.

He still counts as a freshman, though, and is generating both free-throw attempts and turnovers at remarkable rates.

At the charity stripe, Haggerty probably isn't going to challenge Zach Edey for the national lead in made freebies. But at 64-for-78 through nine games, he's on track to score at least 215 points just in free throws.

And with 22 steals, he entered Tuesday night's game against Mississippi Valley State roughly on pace for 75 takeaways. (Assuming Tulsa plays 31 games, which would mean an immediate exit from the AAC tournament and no postseason tournament.)

If Haggerty were to hit each of those marks (215 free throws and 75 steals), he would become just the fifth non-senior in the past three decades to do so.

The others?

Allen Iverson, Stephen Curry, Kemba Walker and Russ Smith.

Decent list of names there, eh?

In addition to the free throws and steals, Haggerty has been a good source of both rebounds and assists and is one of the highest scoring freshmen in the nation.

If the threes ever start to fall (5-of-20 thus far), he'll be a sneaky good candidate for the Freshman All-American team even though Tulsa might not win a single game against a top-100 team.

8. Myles Rice, Washington State

Season Stats: 15.6 PPG, 2.9 APG, 2.4 RPG, 1.9 SPG, 39.5% 3PT

Myles Rice redshirted in 2021-22 and then was a medical redshirt last year while going through chemotherapy to recover from Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma—all that after a 2020-21 senior year of high school played during a pandemic.

So when he took the court for Washington State's opener against Idaho, no one outside of that Cougars locker room quite knew what to expect from the third-year freshman guard who was 247 Sports' No. 200 overall recruit in the class of 2021.

Lo and behold, he has been the star of a program hoping to get back to the NCAA tournament for what would be the first time since 2008.

Rice is leading the Cougars in both points and steals and sits just one assist behind Kymany Houinsou for the team lead in that department. He had seven steals (and seven assists) in a recent win over Grambling State, and against an excellent Mississippi State defense, he led all players with 21 points—albeit with six turnovers—in a loss.

It's a shame the Cougars don't have much else on the roster as far as perimeter shooting is concerned, because Rice is an excellent slasher who would be that much more problematic if the drive and dish was a more legitimate threat.

7. Josh Hubbard, Mississippi State

Season Stats: 16.0 PPG, 2.4 RPG, 1.5 APG, 40.2% 3PT

As a whole, Mississippi State's offense has been...not good.

Take this reserve freshman out of the equation, and the Bulldogs don't have a single player averaging 10 points per game, nor anyone with more than 11 made three-pointers through 11 team games.

In both of their losses, they were held to 59 points.

But Josh Hubbard has given this 9-2 team life, making three times as many triples as his closest teammate, always ready to let it fly from the moment he steps on the floor.

In six consecutive games (seven total), he led the Bulldogs in scoring. That includes the victories over Washington State and Northwestern in the Hall of Fame Tip-Off, as well as the blowout victory over Tulane in what felt like an early must-win game to get back on track after an awful loss to Southern University.

The Northwestern game was the really impressive one. Going up against Boo Buie and the veteran-laden Wildcats, Hubbard stole the show with 29 points off the bench, helping the Bulldogs rally from an early 11-0 hole for a 66-57 victory.

The hope is that Mississippi State will get veteran double-double machine Tolu Smith back from his foot injury in time to make a real impact in SEC play. Once that happens, Smith and Hubbard should be one of the best inside-outside duos in the nation.

6. Malik Mack, Harvard

Season Stats: 20.1 PPG, 4.4 APG, 4.0 RPG, 1.1 SPG, 47.2% 3PT

Malik Mack is quite simply a bucket.

At the start of play Tuesday, no other freshman in the nation was averaging 17 points per game. However, this freshman combo guard for the Crimson was just north of 20. And that's even a drop from where he finished November (21.8 PPG), as Mack had a brutal afternoon in a Dec. 2 blowout loss to Loyola-Chicago.

Aside from getting a bit scrambled by the Ramblers in that one, Mack has been electric, both as a scorer and as a distributor.

In Harvard's OT victory over Massachusetts, Mack either scored (32) or assisted (16) on 48 of the team's 78 points. In the loss to Indiana, he went for 27 points, keeping the Crimson in that game until midway through the second half. He also put up at least 20 against each of Rice, Northeastern and American.

In four of his first six games, Mack recorded at least six assists, ending that hot start with 33 dimes against just 11 turnovers. That included an 8-1 ratio at Colgate in what was perhaps Harvard's best win of the year.

Between Princeton being very good and Harvard not having much of a frontcourt, it's unlikely Mack will get a chance to represent the Ivy League in the NCAA tournament. But if the Crimson do make the dance, he could be for them what C.J. McCollum was when Lehigh pulled off that 15-over-2 upset over Duke in 2012.

5. Carlton Carrington, Pittsburgh

Season Stats: 14.0 PPG, 5.7 APG, 5.3 RPG, 33.8% 3PT

Carlton "Bub" Carrington made the best first impression of any freshman in the nation, posting a triple-double (18 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists) in his collegiate debut.

Sure, it came against North Carolina A&T in a game Pitt won by 48 points, but he's still the only freshman to record a triple-double thus far in 2023-24. And even if you take out that remarkable opening performance, Carrington is still averaging 13.6 points, 5.3 assists and 4.6 rebounds per game.

That includes a 14-7-4 line in a loss to Florida, a 13-6-4 line in a loss to Clemson, a 13-7-4 line in a loss to Missouri and a 16-9-4 line in the win over West Virginia.

It's clear at this point that he can make a major impact against more than just NC A&T.

What's perhaps most impressive about Carrington's play this season is something not listed above: turnovers. The "rookie" point guard has yet to have a game with more than three giveaways, averaging 3.15 assists per turnover through 11 contests.

Because the Panthers haven't actually beaten anyone with anything close to an at-large pulse, Carrington hasn't gotten as much attention as he deserves. But between the Jan. 2 game against North Carolina and the two January matchups with Duke (Jan. 9 and Jan. 20), he's about to get a whole lot of national exposure.

4. Rob Dillingham, Kentucky

Season Stats: 14.4 PPG, 4.5 APG, 4.1 RPG, 1.5 SPG, 46.5% 3PT

While not quite as absurdly efficient as the Reed Sheppard Experience, the Rob Dillingham Experience at Kentucky has been lightning in a bottle, unleashed in bursts of aggressive defense and a permanent green light.

In the Champions Classic against Kansas, Dillingham single-handedly took over the game late in the first half, draining three-pointers on four consecutive possessions. (Had he been able to hit anything in the second half before fouling out, Kentucky likely wins that game.) He was also huge down the stretch of Saturday's win over North Carolina, albeit with twos instead of threes.

Save for the loss to UNC Wilmington—in which the Wildcats desperately needed more than just two points out of Dillingham with DJ Wagner sidelined—he has scored at least a dozen in each contest. He also has recorded at least one steal in each game and had at least three assists in each of his first eight games, including going for 30 assists against six turnovers during Kentucky's lone four-game winning streak of the season.

The Wildcats have three great shooters in Dillingham, Sheppard and Antonio Reeves, but there's just something different about when Dillingham gets into one of his grooves that makes the team feel unstoppable. He's averaging 24.7 points, 7.7 assists and 7.0 rebounds per 40 minutes, which is borderline ludicrous for anyone, let alone a freshman.

3. Ja'Kobe Walter, Baylor

Season Stats: 14.3 PPG, 3.8 RPG, 1.3 SPG, 1.2 APG, 37.3% 3PT

While the rest of our top six has triple-double potential on any given night, Ja'Kobe Walter is much more of a Malik Monk or freshman-year Allonzo Trier type of wing who is almost exclusively going to impact play with his scoring potential.

Walter made a colossal first impression with 28 points in Baylor's season-opening win over Auburn. He later put up 23 against UMKC and 24 against Oregon State.

At that point, he was averaging 19.2 points per game, shooting close to 50 percent from the field, over 40 percent from distance and over 90 percent from the free-throw line.

Had we done this freshman ranking on Thanksgiving, Walter would have been the almost indisputable choice for the top spot.

Since then, however, he has been in a funk, averaging 9.4 points while shooting 33.3 percent from the field and 30.0 percent from three-point range. And by the time he got on the board against Michigan State, Baylor was already down by 19 points.

Walter could flip that script in a hurry, though, with a big game Wednesday against Duke. Or, really, at any point in Big 12 play against the litany of contenders in that league. When he is scoring efficiently, Baylor might have the best offense in the nation.

2. Isaiah Collier, USC

Season Stats: 16.6 PPG, 4.1 APG, 2.7 RPG, 1.4 SPG, 33.3% 3PT

USC's season has not gone according to plan, falling to 5-5 in a 16-point loss to Auburn this past Sunday.

But Isaiah Collier is doing everything he can to keep the Trojans afloat.

The freshman sensation has scored in double figures in each game. He has also recorded multiple assists in every contest, except for the loss to UC Irvine in which both Boogie Ellis and Kobe Johnson were unavailable and Collier essentially had to try to win that game by himself.

Early in the year, Collier had a major turnover problem, averaging 5.3 giveaways through his first six games. He has nipped that in the bud with a total of 12 turnovers in his past four games, but the team defense has been dreadful, and he simply isn't getting enough out of his supporting cast—Johnson, in particular, who needed 30 field-goal attempts to score 21 points during USC's three-game losing streak.

Collier's shooting percentages have taken a major hit in recent weeks, too. Between the losses to Gonzaga and Long Beach State, he went 0-for-6 from three-point range and 7-for-18 from the free-throw line. But he entered that rough patch sitting at 42.1 percent and 79.1 percent, respectively, and may well be the No. 1 pick in the 2024 NBA draft if he can get back to that sooner rather than later.

1. Reed Sheppard, Kentucky

Season Stats: 12.8 PPG, 4.7 RPG, 3.6 APG, 2.9 SPG, 0.9 BPG, 57.1% 3PT

Six months ago—before Globl Jam, before a good chunk of practices and a couple of exhibition games, but after we knew Antonio Reeves would be returning—Reed Sheppard was an afterthought in Kentucky's projected rotation.

The distant fifth-highest-rated member of a star-studded recruiting class joining Reeves, veteran transfer Tre Mitchell and returning sophomores Adou Thiero and Ugonna Onyenso, it was unclear if Sheppard would even touch the floor more than a few minutes here and there.

But it didn't take long for Sheppard to cement himself as the most valuable player on the roster and the best freshman in the nation.

He's still coming off the bench, but he's getting starter minutes, averaging 28.3 MPG over Kentucky's past seven contests. Even that doesn't feel like enough playing time for the elite shooter who has also recorded multiple steals in every game thus far this season.

Between the game against Miami in which DJ Wagner injured his ankle and the subsequent game against UNC Wilmington that Wagner missed, the fully unleashed version of Sheppard was a sight to behold. He went for 46 points, 14 rebounds, 10 assists and five steals during that two-game stretch, at times carrying the team by himself.

Our only complaint about his play thus far is that we don't see that aggressive side of Sheppard often enough.