Editor’s Note: Creighton fans know Sign Guy. He’s entertained Bluejays fans off and on for years at the Civic and CenturyLink Center with his timely, witty, and sometimes downright disturbing poster boards held high in the middle of Section 122. Sign Guy also happens to be a math wiz, and from time to time he puts those talents to good use with his guest posts on WBR. This is his latest.
[dropcap]Georgetown’s[/dropcap] loss on Tuesday night solidified a Top-6 seed for the Bluejays in next week’s Big East Tourney. That’s exciting! A win tonight against Providence would lock up the #4-seed for the Jays, which is even more exciting!
Prior to the Big East tourney, the league will announce the All-Big East teams, and Maurice Watson is bound to get slighted when the All-BE teams are unveiled, given that his value to his team is exponentially higher than any other player in the league, and that his statistics are on par or better than most other high-level players in the conference. Because, if you haven’t noticed, there are quite a few guys playing at very high levels throughout the Big East. But I like numbers and charts and graphs and colors, so below I’ll try to illustrate it without using words.
A few rules about this exercise:
- Only BE conference games are used, so the competition is the same. Not everyone plays the same non-conference schedule. Some schools play in better exempt tournaments whereas some schools have to play lowly teams like Nebraska. I don’t care how well you played in the non-conference; All-BE teams should represent the best guys during the conference season.
- Statistics are updated through February 29, so do not include last night’s results.
- As this works its way down, players with good (not great) stats from poor teams were not included. At this juncture, I believe only Henry Ellenson from Marquette and D’vauntes Smith-Rivera from Georgetown were included from teams with sub-.500 conference records. If a player has great stats but his team is in the Play-In round, then he really shouldn’t be All-Conference material.
When I first set out on this exercise, I figured most of the guys in consideration for All-BE First Team would be the same subset of guys who play the most Minutes Per Game (mpg). I was only sort of right. Below illustrates the contributions from the top 10 mpg guys in the BE, plotting their Points Per Game (ppg) with either Assists Per Game (apg) for point guards, signified by a red dot or Rebounds Per Game (rpg) for big guys, signified by a blue dot. As this is based on total mpg, one would want contributions in the top right quadrant (most favorable) vs bottom left quadrant (least favorable).
Creighton’s Isaiah Zierden gets two dots – one for the entire season and one excluding the anomaly of his DePaul game – as this highlights Mo’s case later on. The range among this 10 for mpg is 36.9 (DSR) down to 33.4 (Bullock). Mo is 7th and IZ 8th in mpg. Note that Mo has arguably the best contributions from any of the PGs (Kris Dunn, DSR, Ryan Arcidiacono) as he leads the league in apg by more than a full assist per game (!) and trails only DSR in ppg among the PGs.
I realized the above obviously misses quite a few of the top-caliber and top-impact players in the Big East, so I expanded the chart to include the stat-sheet stuffers ranking among the Top-25 in scoring of the Big East, with personal license to exclude players from St. John’s, DePaul, and Georgetown as they’re the bottom three teams in the standings. This appears to be a more complete pool of players competing for All-BE honors (regardless of mpg), and the data points seem to make sense with the inclusion of Josh Hart, Kelan Martin, and Isaiah Whitehead in the top right quadrant and the contributions from Angel Delgado, Daniel Ochefu, James Farr, etc in the top left quad. I included two data points for Whitehead, as his stats following SHU’s home shellacking to the Jays on January 9th are incredible once he switched to the primary PG role: 19.9ppg, 5.9apg, 3.7rpg. He is certainly playing at a very high level, and perhaps as a result SHU is 9-3 in those 12 games. In any event, the depth of Villanova, Xavier, and Seton Hall is reflected on this chart.
What the above chart does not necessarily show is how efficient all of those players are in their allotted minutes, as a group of 25 players certainly plays varying levels of minutes. For example, is inclusion in the top right quadrant a product of playing a higher volume of minutes and appearing in the bottom left quadrant a product of playing fewer minutes?
So, in lieu of delving into the deepest corners of basketball analytics, I created my own simple version of offensive contributions (JJoeff), using a formula combining ppg, apg, and rpg, then comparing this total calculation to the mpg for that player. There are known flaws in the JJoeff (notably, quantifying defense), mainly because I didn’t spend that much time digging into this curiosity. The average JJoeff rate for this group of 25 players was right at 0.75 (represented by the red slope line below). Data points above the line indicate greater-than-average in efficiency; data points below the line indicate lower-than-average efficiency. The distance from the line indicates the magnitude of that variance.
This also shows that even a low-mpg player (Cole Huff and Geoff Groselle, for example) are right at the subset-average for JJoeff. This doesn’t necessarily mean those two guys should play more, as there are reasons everyone is playing the mpgs they are, but when you look at the higher mpg guys, its noticeable those players are playing at extremely high levels (Whitehead, Watson, Dunn, Ben Bentil, DSR, etc.).
Which brings me to my All-BE First Team (with two games remaining):
The BE still uses a 6-person First Team, including the Player of the Year plus five additional players. Here is who I think SHOULD be on the First Team and who I think WILL be on the First Team:
Big East Player of the Year:
This should be Isaiah Whitehead. He’s led the resurgence of Seton Hall and they are the hottest team in the league right now. I actually think this will be Whitehead, too.
Should be First Teamers:
- Isaiah Whitehead, for the reasons listed above.
- Ben Bentil. Unavoidably gaudy numbers make him a no-brainer; the league’s top scorer, a vastly improved player, and a fun player to watch.
- Mo Watson. Nobody has done more with relatively less than Mo. Both his pure numbers and adjusted numbers compare favorably to his peers and other point guards, and his supporting cast is worse.
- Kris Dunn
- Kelan Martin
- Josh Hart
Will be First Teamers:
- Kris Dunn. He was Co-POY last year, preseason POY this year, the Face of the Conference before January 1st, and everyone believes his stats are infallible.
- Whitehead
- Bentil
- Henry Ellenson. Preseason All-BE, averages a near double-double in conference play, up for National Frosh of the Year. Nobody will care his team will be in the Play-in Round.
So that’s four spots. Two spots left, of which these guys are all in play:
- DSR. Two-time All-BE selection, preseason All-BE, nobody will care his team will be in the Play-in Round.
- Ryan Arcidiacono. Co-POY last season, PG of three-time champion
- Mo Watson. Outsider, transfer-in, goes to a school in the Central time zone
- Trevon Blueitt. Somebody from Xavier has to be on the list, right? Right?
- Josh Hart. Somebody from Nova (if not Arch or in addition to Arch) has to be on this team, right?
- Roosevelt Jones. Though he runs around the court like a wounded deer, people love talking about his game, and he is somewhat efficient, even though he runs around the court like a wounded deer. Maybe depends where Butler finishes.
In other words, the deck is stacked against Mo. Even with a potential solo fourth-place finish for his team, and terrific individual numbers on his side, it’s almost certainly not going to happen. At least Bluejay fans can take solace in the fact that next year, Watson will have Marcus Foster adding better data points for the Bluejays, too, and perhaps an even higher finish for the team on his side, as well.