As I promised yesterday, I calculated the final regular season Prouty ratings for all ACC players. As I expected, the Prouties accurately picked four of the five first-team All-ACC performers. The one exception is Sean Singletary, who comes in 15th in Prouty, but the ratings don’t take into account leadership, toughness or offensive burden, other than in the catch-all category of Win Effect (see this explanation of the ratings).
One player I pointed out yesterday as being undervalued by the league’s voters was Jared Dudley. Just as I suspected, the Prouties backed me up. Dudley comes in fifth place overall in the league, which makes sense, as his numbers are fairly close to his teammate Craig Smith’s.
One aspect of the Prouty ratings that I’ve said before that I like is also one that I have some problems with. We all know that statistics don’t tell the whole story in basketball, so the Prouty ratings include a team’s overall success in the formula. The theory is that things like setting good picks, fighting through screens, remembering plays and hustling after loose balls don’t always show up in a box score, but they are critical aspects of winning. So, the ratings factor in a team’s winning percentage. I think that’s great, but I think that the Prouty ratings give this factor too much weight. Win Effect is equal to Points Per Minute, Possessions Per Minute and Offensive Efficiency. While I agree that some stats are missing in there, I don’t think the missing stats add up to 25% of the total. Conventional numbers aren’t that bad.
To fix this problem, I recalculated the ratings giving Win Effect only 10% of the total. I put these in a column called “Dave” for “Dave Ratings” just because something like “Adjusted Prouty” sounded too boring (and made the column too wide). This change doesn’t have a huge overall impact, but it does help guys like Singletary who shine on a team that’s not doing well. It also helps to offset the pull that great teams have on average players. For example, Sean Dockery is a good player who’s important to Duke’s success, but is he really the 12th best player in the league? Far from it. The Dave ratings put him at 35, which is more reasonable (especially when you remember that there are 12 teams in the league now).
Below is a list of the top 50 players in the league, sorted by their Dave Rating. You can see the full stats here.
Rank Player Team Prouty Dave 1 JJ Redick Duke 0.589 0.540 2 Shelden Williams Duke 0.569 0.535 3 Tyler Hansbrough UNC 0.514 0.500 4 Craig Smith BC 0.515 0.478 5 Jared Dudley BC 0.513 0.469 6 Al Thornton FSU 0.474 0.468 7 Reyshawn Terry UNC 0.462 0.462 8 Chris McCray MD 0.422 0.453 9 Cedric Simmons NCS 0.457 0.449 10 Eric Williams WF 0.437 0.442 11 David Noel UNC 0.476 0.442 12 Sean Singletary UVA 0.434 0.436 13 Alexander Johnson FSU 0.430 0.433 14 Danny Green UNC 0.409 0.429 15 Robert Hite UM 0.427 0.428 16 Nik Caner-Medley MD 0.441 0.427 17 Engin Atsur NCS 0.452 0.421 18 Akin Akingbala CU 0.415 0.414 19 Tyrese Rice BC 0.414 0.413 20 Ilian Evtimov NCS 0.431 0.413 21 Josh McRoberts Duke 0.429 0.412 22 Justin Gray WF 0.413 0.411 23 Guillermo Diaz UM 0.418 0.410 24 JR Reynolds UVA 0.408 0.404 25 Cameron Bennerman NCS 0.425 0.404 26 Jamon Gordon VT 0.407 0.404 27 Louis Hinnant BC 0.439 0.402 28 Trent Strickland WF 0.402 0.402 29 Ra'Sean Dickey GT 0.381 0.401 30 Ekene Ibekwe MD 0.393 0.400 31 Shawan Robinson CU 0.398 0.397 32 Anthony Morrow GT 0.385 0.396 33 Sean Marshall BC 0.421 0.393 34 Zabian Dowdell VT 0.398 0.391 35 Sean Dockery Duke 0.440 0.391 36 James Mays CU 0.348 0.390 37 Vernon Hamilton CU 0.399 0.388 38 Isaiah Swann FSU 0.386 0.387 39 Gavin Grant NCS 0.389 0.387 40 Coleman Collins VT 0.379 0.386 41 Jeremis Smith GT 0.369 0.385 42 Andrew Brackman NCS 0.381 0.384 43 Mike Jones MD 0.375 0.379 44 Tony Bethel NCS 0.405 0.378 45 Wes Miller UNC 0.387 0.377 46 DJ Strawberry MD 0.393 0.377 47 Andrew Wilson FSU 0.367 0.374 48 Anthony King UM 0.371 0.372 49 James Gist MD 0.366 0.371 50 Bobby Frasor UNC 0.395 0.367
A few thing that stood out to me:
- Losing Chris McCray really hurt Maryland more than most might have guessed. Actually, that’s fairly obvious now, but seeing that McCray still rates as the eighth best player in the league, it makes a lot of sense.
- Justin Gray, as I pointed out yesterday, was way overrated by the voters. I think they gave him credit for his career, or more likely, just looked at his scoring average.
- Danny Green isn’t just a nice role player for Carolina – he’s very efficiently productive!
- Tyrese Rice should probably be starting for Boston College.
- Cameron Bennerman is overrated, at least relative to his NC State teammates. I suspected this already, and the numbers back it up. Ilian Evtimov and Engin Atsur, his more versatile teammates, count more towards State’s success (or lack thereof).
- Reyshawn Terry, at least from a production standpoint, is a better player than David Noel. I know he’s not the leader that Noel is, but Terry had a hell of a emergence in the second half of the season, and his numbers reflect that.
- Florida State’s Andrew Wilson is not only older than half of the NBA All-Stars, but he’s the most efficient scorer in the league (among players who play at least 15 minutes per game. Miami’s flashy freshman Denis Clemente is dead last.
- It’s no shocker that J.J. Redick leads the league in points per minute (by a huge margin), but I was surprised to see that Sean Singletary is number two. When you factor in Virginia’s relatively slow tempo, that’s just more evidence to support his first-team honors. Although, to be fair, Justin Gray comes in third, so either I’m too hard on Gray or that stat means less than I think.
- When he wears his mask, Laurynas Mikalauskas is the scariest-looking player in decades. He looks like he wants to eat your children.
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