If you’ve been paying any attention to the talk around the coming NBA Draft, then you know that Duke’s Jahlil Okafor and Kentucky’s Karl Anthony Towns will likely go #1 and #2 in the draft.

After the two big men — the remaining prospects to go in the top five included a name you might not have been familiar with — Emmanuel Mudiay, a Congolese-American basketball player from Texas.

In many mock drafts — experts have the 6-5 point guard going 4th or 5th, so why haven’t we heard much of Mudiay during the college season? It’s because the 18 year old jumped from high school to play professionally the CBA – China’s professional basketball league.

Initially signing with SMU, Mudiay decided to go overseas to bring much-needed financial support for his family and to his hone his craft. Playing against former NBA players Metta World Peace, Stephon Marbury, Jordan Crawford, Delonte West, Yi Jianlian, Von Wafer and others, Mudiay did well considering his age and experience.

His stats weren’t mind-blowing, but certainly impressive for a rookie point guard straight out of his senior year in high school.

Playing 12 games with the Guangdong Foshan club, Mudiay averaged 18 points, 6.3 rebounds, 5.9 assists and 1.6 steals. The guard may have taken one shot every two minutes (15.3 FGA in 31.5 minutes), but he did so at a respectable rate (47.8 FG% and 34.2% from three).

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However, it wasn’t all roses during those twelve matches. His first game of the season started out strong with 18 points, 3 rebounds and 2 assists in a victory over Marbury’s Beijing Ducks, but his second game saw Mudiay foul out after scoring just 7 points in a loss.

The multi-talented guard posted a triple-double (22 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds) during his short stint in China, but also ran into problems with turnovers in critical moments of a couple games.

He may have approached 6 assists a game, but he also averaged 3.25 turnovers a game for a less than 2-to-1 assist/turnover ratio. He connected on over 34% from the distance, but shot less than 60% from the free throw line (57.4%) one of the worst percentages of all players that played over 10 minutes a game.

And then in his 12th game of the season, Mudiay was carried off the court after injuring his ankle. With Mudiay sidelined for a couple weeks, Guangdong decided to bring in Will Bynum for the remainder of the season (Bynum signed with the Washington Wizards when John Wall went down).

In face of his stats, it’s important to keep in mind that the CBA has a reputation in some circles as more an league for entertainment than it is about pure basketball competition:

In China, American-born players are typically showcased, not hidden and held back. The play is unstructured, though, the talent discrepancy can be pretty large on some teams after their two imports and teams won’t hesitate to make a change if there is a better option out there.

No doubt, the point guard is the toughest position to transition from in a move from a college to the professional leagues, much less a move from high school to the pros. Mudiay may have played only a quarter of the the CBA season, but he showed enough to make him an interesting enough prospect.