Best players by state
01.16.12
After anointing Luke Martinez the best D-I player from North Dakota a couple of weeks ago, I thought it would be fun to figure out who had geographical bragging rights in each state and Canadian province on the continent. The table below summarizes that research. I’ve taken the kPOY formula out of the garage for the first time this season and used it to determine “best” in these cases. (We’ll get to the issue of revealing the first kPOY top ten list later in the week.)
In case the trivia of the best player in each state doesn’t excite you, I’ve added more trivia. The number of players from each state that have registered at least 10% of his team’s minutes is listed along with how that translates to a per-capita (one million capitas, technically) figure. The list is sorted in decreasing order by the latter number.
Drew Cannon did the definitive work on the geography of D-I talent in the off-season, so I’m not going to make any groundbreaking claims that add to his exhaustive work. But there are a couple of things I find interesting about the per-capita distribution of players. First, the deep south produces more players than I expected, basically leading the nation in player density as a region. Drew’s work showed that more of these players are at low-major programs than in most states, so it’s not like there’s a gold mine of talent there, but at least there are players.
That’s more than you can say for New England where kids just don’t care as much about hoops relative to the rest of the country. The only player from Maine getting significant minutes is Notre Dame’s Tom Knight, and he might quibble with my use of “significant”. Sure, you can say the lack of urban areas suppresses the count in places like Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, but that doesn’t explain why the number of players from Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts is roughly on par with those from Alaska when scaled for population.
Rk Players Per 1M Best player 1 District of Columbia 22 36.6 Thomas Robinson, Kansas 2 Maryland 108 18.7 Will Barton, Memphis 3 Louisiana 79 17.4 Scott Saunders, Belmont 4 Georgia 167 17.2 Tony Mitchell, Alabama 5 Mississippi 51 17.2 Isaiah Canaan, Murray State 6 Indiana 87 13.4 Cody Zeller, Indiana 7 Virginia 107 13.4 Mike Scott, Virginia 8 Illinois 169 13.2 Anthony Davis, Kentucky 9 Tennessee 80 12.6 Chris Crawford, Memphis 10 North Carolina 118 12.4 Ryan Kelly, Duke 11 Delaware 11 12.3 Jarrett Mann, Stanford 12 Iowa 34 11.2 Doug McDermott, Creighton 13 Arkansas 32 11.0 A.J. Walton, Baylor 14 Alabama 52 10.9 JaMychal Green, Alabama 15 New Jersey 94 10.7 Tyshawn Taylor, Kansas 16 Michigan 94 9.5 Draymond Green, Michigan St. 17 Texas 229 9.1 J'Covan Brown, Texas 18 New York 173 8.9 Kevin Jones, West Virginia 19 South Carolina 41 8.9 LaRon Dendy, Middle Tennessee 20 Minnesota 47 8.9 Jordan Taylor, Wisconsin 21 Florida 166 8.8 John Henson, North Carolina 22 Nebraska 16 8.8 Antoine Young, Creighton 23 Missouri 52 8.7 Marcus Denmon, Missouri 24 South Dakota 7 8.6 Chad White, South Dakota St. 25 Kentucky 37 8.5 Darius Miller, Kentucky 26 Ohio 98 8.5 Jared Sullinger, Ohio State 27 Kansas 24 8.4 Kyle Weems, Missouri State 28 Nevada 22 8.1 Pierre Jackson, Baylor 29 Oregon 30 7.8 Mike Moser, UNLV 30 California 286 7.7 Rob Jones, St. Mary's 31 Pennsylvania 97 7.6 Herb Pope, Seton Hall 32 Wisconsin 43 7.6 Jake Koch, Northern Iowa 33 Utah 20 7.2 Brandon Davies, BYU 34 Wyoming 4 7.1 Adam Waddell, Wyoming 35 Connecticut 25 7.0 T.J. Robinson, Long Beach State 36 Oklahoma 25 6.7 Noah Hartsock, BYU 37 Rhode Island 7 6.7 Erik Murphy, Florida 38 Washington 40 5.9 Joe Harris, Virginia 39 Alaska 4 5.6 Damen Bell-Holter, Oral Roberts 40 Arizona 35 5.5 Ryan Evans, Wisconsin 41 West Virginia 10 5.4 Todd Mayo, Marquette 42 Massachusetts 31 4.7 Evan Smotrycz, Michigan 43 North Dakota 3 4.5 Luke Martinez, Wyoming 44 New Mexico 8 3.9 Chad Adams, New Mexico 45 Idaho 6 3.8 Mitch Bruneel, Utah State 46 Colorado 19 3.8 Dario Hunt, Nevada 47 Vermont 2 3.2 Matt Glass, Vermont 48 New Hampshire 4 3.0 Luke Apfeld, Vermont 49 Ontario 40 3.0 Kevin Pangos, Gonzaga 50 Nova Scotia 2 2.1 Chris Johnson, St. Bonaventure 51 Montana 2 2.0 Josh Huestis, Stanford 52 Quebec 10 1.3 Kris Joseph, Syracuse 53 British Columbia 5 1.1 Robert Sacre, Gonzaga 54 Maine 1 0.8 Tom Knight, Notre Dame 55 Hawaii 1 0.7 Jeremiah Ostrowski, Hawaii
A tribute to Quincy Roberts
01.13.12
The player of the year race is not about which player is most valuable to his team. At least, not exactly. The evaluation includes a subjective component related to the quality of the player’s team. That’s why Grambling’s Quincy Roberts has no shot at getting any fame from his performance this season. I’ll try to do my small part to change that in the next few paragraphs, because there’s a strong case that there’s no player in the nation more valuable to his team.
First the backstory: Roberts was recruited to St. John’s by then-head coach Norm Roberts (no relation) and spent his freshman season (way back in 2009) being the sixth man on a team that limped into the CBI with a 16-17 record. Roberts’ stats screamed out transfer – the 6-5 wing posted an offensive rating of just 85 while using a mere 18% of the Red Storm’s possessions when he was on the floor. He wasn’t a great shooter, he couldn’t draw fouls and he committed too many turnovers while not denting the rebound or assist columns either. In short, Roberts was overmatched by the Big East level of play.
However, Roberts didn’t run from the situation. He redshirted the 2010 season after suffering an off-season concussion and then he stuck around through the coaching change the following spring, remaining on the Johnnies’ roster at the beginning of Steve Lavin’s first season. Under Lavin, Roberts was relegated to less playing time than the season before, prompting him to leave the program after taking all of eight field goal attempts.
His move was interesting to say the least, heading to Grambling, a team that is habitually inept during its annual pre-conference barnstorming tour to power conference schools. The story on his decision to leave is told here by James Phillips of the Harrisburg Patriot News. But basically, Roberts wanted to play at an HBCU and be in a smaller town. Even though there are better programs that fit that description, he chose Grambling to finish his eligibility.
This season for Grambling has been disappointing even by the Tigers’ standards and the team is chasing a new low for offensive futility at the D-I level. In non-conference play, Grambling made 30.3% of its two-point attempts. Consider that the average D-I team makes about 34% of its three-point attempts. Grambling’s 0-10 record during that stretch was accompanied by a luck rating of .000, meaning that 0-10 was absolutely and completely deserved. Their closest non-conference loss was a 28-point decision to Texas Tech. In eight of their ten losses, they scored 45 points or fewer.
Because Roberts transferred mid-season from St. John’s, he was not eligible to play in Grambling’s first eight games. Since he avoided the tougher defenses on the Tigers’ schedule, Grambling’s player stats summary looks comical. Roberts has an offensive rating of 98 to go with a usage of 36 (and a shot percentage of 41!), while none of his lesser-involved teammates has an offensive rating higher than 82. However, limiting the data to the six games in which Roberts has played indicates that he truly is substantially better than his fellow Tigers on the offensive end. That data is shown below.
2PM-A 3PM-A FTM-A Roberts 51-114 .447 11-31 .355 43-52 .827 Others 64-199 .322 10-49 .204 49-72 .681
Considering the easier slate of opponents over this time and that Roberts is attracting more of the defense’s attention, Grambling’s “others” are still a woeful offensive bunch. Since he became eligible, Roberts has taken 39% of the team’s threes, 42% of its free throws, and has still found the time to take 114 twos in his six games on the court and make a respectable 45% of them. Nobody could blame him if he became more selfish. Feel free to blow away Jimmer-type levels of shooting frequency, Mr. Roberts. I have your back.
Grambling has won two of its first four SWAC games, which is noteworthy because the team without Roberts had a reasonable chance of skating through the entire season without a W. Even with his presence, the Tigers are still last nationally in two-point percentage and second-to-last in three-point percentage.
The money quote from Roberts in the Patriot-News piece was “coming from the Big East, I’m going to kill this league.” He has made good on that promise and he’s doing it without any help. While Grambling is much better with his presence, it’s probably not good enough for the Tigers to finish in the top half of the SWAC.
So you aren’t going to see Grambling on TV, and in fact, I can’t even find a photo of Roberts in a Grambling uniform. He is an anonymous dude whom you will have to work hard to keep dibs on, but it’s worth doing so. When you’re the team’s most frequent shooter (by far) and you are much more accurate than your teammates in every shooting category, you are special. Or at least in a special situation.
A note on recent site updates
01.12.12
There have been some features added to the site over the past 2-3 weeks and I haven’t gone out of my way to publicize them. I think most subscribers have discovered them, but for those that haven’t, I’m providing a description of the improvements here.
InstaGamePrep – Now you can click on upcoming prediction on a team’s schedule (or the game time on future FanMatch pages) and you’ll get a page with the vital stats for each team. This will allow you to more easily identify unique matchups in any game. Surprised that Northwestern went almost 25 minutes before getting its first offensive rebound against Michigan last night? Well you shouldn’t have. And while you could have determined that from clicking on each team’s page, now you can see the data side-by-side. Use it before the game, or use it at a commercial break to get up to speed on a game you’ve just tuned in to.
Ranking progression – On each team’s schedule you can now see that team’s rank before each game it played this season. So the fact that Wisconsin was ranked first in early January will forever be recorded. You can also see Pitt’s amazing slide as well. Yes, they miss Travon Woodall, but it’s hard to see him being the difference between a top 25 team and whatever the Panthers are now.
Conference SOS – This was introduced last season, but it’s been put back on the conference pages with conference play heating up. It can be a useful mid-season tool in evaluating conference records/stats. Colorado is leading the Pac-12 at this moment, but they’ve played by far the easiest schedule in the conference to this point. Which means the rest of their schedule is going to be tougher than everyone else’s. And since they’re an average Pac-12 team to begin with, that probably means a correction is on the way.