Still looking up via kwout

Penn State, with their two road wins, has to be one of the talks of the conference. Couple that with their two stars having back to back double doubles, i.e. the previously mentioned double double double double (probably the perfect example of a good thing being taken too far ), and you have a perfect opportunity.

For the record, in the two wins Claxton had 29 pts and 23 rebs, while Cornley had 40 pts and 22 rebs, Also, due to the odd ball Monday game against Lehigh, the weekly totals for the guys were Claxton 58 points and 33 rebounds and Cornley 52 points and 26 rebounds (four more boards for Jamelle and the two would have averaged a double double for the week).

I realize there were other notable performances around the league. Raymar Morgan’s 31 points and 10 boards yesterday being one of them, but PSU’s two unexpected road wins ought to be the determining factor. Jamar Butler’s 32 points against Illinois were most noteworthy and he certainly showed he can contribute to Ohio State winning in more ways than one with his oddball 10 rebounds, 11 assists double double yesterday (but I would be considerably more impressed with that performance if he hadn’t also taken and missed seven shots).

I think making Claxton and Cornley a “double” winner would be a natural. Here’s hoping PSU sells it that way and that the Big Ten office buys it.

Raymar Morgan.

Say WHAT?

Using my modified Dean Oliver Four Factors methodology (for details on the method see the preceding article in this series, i.e. the Pete Maravich effect), I concluded exactly that.

First, lets check out the laundry list of candidates. The criteria to get on the watch list was to be among the top 30 in the league in minutes per game. Those 30 guys are (listed by mpg).

Using this list I ranked each of the 30 guys based on the scoring production (points and assists), turnovers (steals, blocks, turnovers, and fouls), rebounding (offensive and defensive), and free throws (free throws per field goal attempt). Here are the top ten from the list in each category.

For the All Around ranking, I weight each of the above categories (I’m only listing the top ten in each category but when I do the weighting and ranking I am using all 30 players). The top ten from that list are:

I’m sure the name at the top of the list is going to raise a few eyebrows. But, I’ve said many times, the purpose of all this number crunching isn’t to just reaffirm what conventional wisdom says. It’s to open the mind up to additional possibilities, it’s to make you think. And I would hope that any list with Raymar Morgan’s name at the top would get you thinking.

Sniff Test

The quickest and easiest way to evaluate any proposed new methodology is to ask “Does it pass the “Sniff Test”"? When your first reaction here is “something smells”, you should dig deeper into the data.

With the way that Eric Gordon topped each of the other lists, the initial reaction here would have to be “something seems a little fishy”.  However, when you look past Raymar Morgan, the typical names are there. #2 DJ White and #3 Geary Claxton are on everyone’s list of the top players in the league. I doubt that many would argue against Drew Neitzel being one of the top players in the league. Craig Moore placed #5 on each of the other three evaluations (NBA efficiency, Game Score, and Win Score). And Raymar Morgan, himself , was 2,3, and 4 in the other three rankings. So the basic methodology doesn’t appear to have a fundamental flaw.

So why is Eric Gordon so low? Perhaps because, as proficient a scorer as he is, he just isn’t solid enough in the other parts of his game to claim the best overall player crown. He’s clearly the best scorer in the league, by far, – and that huge scoring edge is what carries him to the top in the NBA, Game Score, and Win Score ratings. Gordon is also the best in the league at getting to the free throw line and making his shots, so where does he fall down?

The problem comes from the other two factors. Gordon doesn’t rebound well (25th) plus he’s significantly minus in the turnover department (24th). Interestingly, several of the other top candidates have flaws too. Morgan is below average in the turnover rankings (18th) but rebounds well (5th). Claxton, similarly has a turnover problem (27th) but also rebounds well (4th). Moore and Neitzell are the reverse. They protect the ball well (2nd and 8th) but don’t rebound all that well (17th and 28th). But Gordon is the one that comes up short in both.

That does raise another question? Is there anyone who does all four well. The answer to that is yes. DJ White really has no deficiencies in his game. He’s 10th in point production, 11th in turnovers, 3rd in rebounding, and 4th in free throws. While no one on the list is in the top ten in all four categories, DJ White comes the closest. Unfortunately, the two categories that he’s the lowest in, i.e. point production and turnovers, happen to be the two that carry the most overall weight (about 70% combined) in the equation so he comes up just short of Morgan.

So for the time being at least, Raymar Morgan gets to hold the crown of Best All Around player in the league. My gut feel, though, is that DJ White is going to lay claim to it during conference play. We shall see.

I’ll continue to update all on any changes to the rankings at various times during the season. Nobody is a runaway leader in this system and the rankings could change several times during conference play.

Using that as a model, here are the top ten performers in the conference (NOTE: for each of these evaluations, I limited my calculations to the top thirty guys in the league in terms of minutes per game).

Game Score

Many, most notably Dean Oliver and John Hollinger, find fault with the simplistic NBA model. They feel that all of these measure should not have equal wait. They modify the NBA model by only assigning half a point to blocks, assists, fouls, and free throw attempts.

Using their model, often called Game Score, the top ten performers are:

Win Score

Lastly there are others, specifically the authors of Wages of Wins, who feel that Oliver and Hollinger were on the right track by assigning weights but were just arbitrary in assigning half weights to certain values. Instead they choose to run a regression analysis to more accurately determine the correct weights. Their conclusions: Points, steals, and turnovers are equal and assigned a weight of 1; field goal attempts, offensive rebounds, assists, and blocks get a .7 weight; made field goals and personal fouls have a .4 factor; and, finally, defensive rebounds weigh in at .3.

Using that formula, called Win Score, here are the top ten in the conference.

Rather than anointing one as better than the others in this post (I have my own methodology that I’m working on that I’ll cover at a later date), I’m just going to average the three approaches.

Doing that give us this top ten.

It certainly looks like Eric Gordon could be on track to win both the Freshman and the Player of the Year in the B10, although I do suspect that DJ White will pick up a bunch of votes for his body of work.

Also, all of the measures seem to be pretty consistent on who the top five are. Things do start to shuffle around a little bit with the second ten though.

It will be interesting to see how things hold up through conference play.

Now the rest of this post will be devoted to quantifying that answer.

First the traditional measures.

In the hoops world the standards of measurement have always been one, scoring, and two, rebounding. Claxton is one of just three Big Ten players (Raymor Morgan and DJ White being the others) to sit in the top ten in both categories.

Here’s the Big Ten Top Ten scoring list:

Here’s the Big Ten Top Ten rebounding list:

Now, if I may, I’m going to borrow from the golf world and come up with a not so traditional measure.

Total Playing:

The PGA stat Total Driving is simply the sum of the players rank in driving distance and driving accuracy (i.e. fairways hit in regulation). Thus my Total Playing statistic simply becomes the sum of the Big Ten players ranking in scoring and rebounding.

So my Total Playing list becomes:

1. Geary Claxton PSU 4 (2 + 2)
2. DJ White IU 7 (6 + 1)
3. Raymor Morgan MSU 8 (3 + 5)