Wednesday, August 06, 2008

For next season (Big Ten Basketball Wonkery)

I posted my final 2008 Big Ten conference per-possession stat-crunching efficiency ratings a few months ago. However, I finally got around to one commenters' suggestion that I break it down by who's returning, and at what position. So I cobbled together my per-possession & per-game efficiency stats, and tried to figure out who has a good chance to succeed with more minutes available, and for good measure tried to figure out the overall rankings of the freshmen/jucos/redshirts/transfers and which players are likely to start for which team. I moved a couple of players around from the spots they played last year to where I think they'll be needed next season (Iowa's Cyrus Tate moves to Center, Minnesota's Damian Johnson moves to the 4-spot, and I'm guessing Demetri McCamey probably takes over the point duties full-time at Illinois).

You can check out my basic rankings here. Again, you can compare to the raw data report (sorted by school), but let me know what surprised you or where you think I'm crazy.

Updated: I corrected a couple of typos on my ratings sheet, and now have all the expected starters for the Big Ten Basketball teams in bold on the spreadsheet.

2 Comments:

At 7:21 PM, Blogger KJonthebanks said...

The rankings for returning players are strictly based on your efficiency rankings, right?

Subjectively, Allen and Lucas look too low to me. I expect they'll both take major steps forward as freshman.

For other teams, I think Landry will move up the list at the PF spot and Harris will move up the list at SF.

Also, my guess is that Durrell Summers will be MSU's fifth starter, not Draymond Green. But that assumes a smaller lineup with Morgan at the 4, which doesn't jive with your (quite reasonable) categorization or Morgan as a SF.

 
At 6:56 AM, Blogger Indiana Fan said...

The rankings are indeed based on my efficiency ratings, although I tried to strike something of a balance between the effectiveness per-game & per-possession.

Chris Allen was most surprising in his lack of effectiveness, but I think it's the Kammron Taylor effect: a shooter with the ability to get to the rim can be devastating on offense and crucial for a team's chemistry, but the individual efficiency suffers as they are generally off the ball and not getting assists or rebounds. That's also why I like to rate by position as best I can.

As for Lucas, he suffered from the same problem the whole class of stellar frosh point guards had: turnovers. Look for those to decrease across the board this year.

And I do think you're probably correct about Summers (at least from the noises that Izzo has been making this summer). However, I also think that you MSU guys are downplaying Green, who sits pretty high on some recruiting lists. I think he could be your best 4-spot guy next year, even tho you may start small.

 

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