NBA Draft Trends, 2016

The 2016 NBA Draft deadline has come and gone so while everyone scrambles to update their Big Boards and Way-Too-Early-Top-25 projections for next season, we can also take a look at updating some trends.

The 60 NBA underclass entries was the highest in at least the last ten years (and likely ever).



The basketball hot stove league really has taken on a life of its own each spring, not only with all the spring transfers and coaching moves, but now with what looks to be a free for all where everyone under the sun "declares from the draft", from future top 5 picks to players truly on the bubble to guys who just want five minutes of exposure and feedback.  After all, there's no penalty, so it shouldn't have been a shock to see well over a hundred players throw their hat in the ring.

With a cursory look at the trends, you might think that this new process led to a few extra players getting seduced by the false hope of NBA dreams and declaring, but that may not be the case.  Looking below, the number of power conference players declaring stayed exactly steady from last year (with neither being a record).
There is plenty of legitimate talent in the dozen and a half players who declared from outside the power conferences like James Webb III or Kay Felder, guys who would have made a real impact nationally next season, but at the same time some of those others include Thon Maker, who was never going to play a minute of college basketball, and troubled basketball nomad Brandon Austin.  It's a mixed bag.

The strength of next year's draft class has also been talked about at length by recruiting pundits and draftniks.  I think it's impossible to make that prediction over a year ahead of time, and it's not clear that players took that into account when deciding whether or not to return.




















Conference-wise, the SEC was hurt the most.  While that hasn't been unusual in recent years due to the Calipari recruiting machine, Vanderbilt (Wade Baldwin and Damian Jones) and LSU (Ben Simmons and Tim Quarterman) took almost as big a hit as Kentucky (Skal Labissiere, Tyler Ulis and Jamal Murray.

Also notable, if we're using early entries as any kind of proxy for conference talent level is the increase in the Big East's losses in comparison to its first two years post-split.  Six players declared, compared to just two combined in the past two years, and perhaps best of all for Big East fans, strong players/prospects like Josh Hart and Trevon Blueitt returned to school.

One factor in the increase in players declaring early is the transfer market.  More players than ever will have completed four years in college (and possibly a degree) without exhausting their eligibility. This year alone, Robert Carter, Stefan Jankovic, James Webb III, Kareem Canty, Chris Obekpa, Jalen Reynolds, Rosco Allen, and Kris Dunn would all have been in their fifth year in 2016-17.  While there are a variety of unique individual circumstances in that group, the common denominator is that only Dunn has hopes of landing in the first round, and aside from Carter, none of the rest look likely to be selected at all.  For many, chasing the NBA dream may be second to using their skills to make money while they're young.

In the end, this was a year not unlike most others of recent vintage.  The top freshmen in the country (save Ivan Raab) all put in their year in college and got out quickly.  Projected lottery picks did not return.  But plenty did, and coming off a tremendously exciting season, there's a lot of reason to count down to November.

2016 Draft Comps

We're now two months removed from the 2015 NBA Draft.  If this were the NFL, that would be enough time for Mel Kiper and Todd McShay to be on version 13 of their 2016 mocks by now, but since the college hoops off-season is much quieter than the NFL version, you have to hunt a little bit more for previews of the next draft.  Luckily the always excellent Draft Express has a full mock posted already.

It's all still very early since we haven't seen a game in five months but because we're coming down the stretch of the sad months between Madness (March and Midnight), I started to look at their mock and think a little about who might be the biggest successes in the draft.  As always I looked to the unparalleled kenpom, not just for advanced statistics for some of the top returning college players, but also his season similarity scores to help evaluate players' pro prospects.  It's far from an exact science, especially with just the 5 most comparable players listed on each page, but it gives us some quality insight when we see players with lots of NBA comps and/or very few similar players.

The rules are simple - the higher the number, the closer the match.  Better players will not only have better quality comps, but their top comps will have lower scores.  Average players are a dime a dozen, but truly outstanding players are unique.

#30: Malik Pope, San Diego State [Similar: '15 Isaac Copeland (898), '15 Marvin Clark (896), '09 Lance Goulbourne (878), '14 Austin Nichols (878), '13 Sheldon Jeter (875)] - Pope is the rare 6-10 freshman with touch from the outside, canning 20 threes in his first season despite playing only 16 minutes a game in Mountain West play.  Pope was considered a potential draft pick last year, but needs to improve his frame to rebound and score more effectively inside.

#29: Tim Quarterman, LSU [Similar: '15 Troy Caupain (923), '15 Scoochie Smith (912), '11 Anthony Marshall (907), '11 Brandyn Curry (906), '13 Royce O'Neale (901)] - Quarterman went from a bit player as a freshman to a focal point for an LSU team that featured two draft picks in Jarell Martin and Jordan Mickey.  Quarterman's size and point guard skills have him on the radar, but his lack of shooting keeps him low on the board, and with middling comparables.

#28: Marcus Lee, Kentucky [Similar: '11 Wendell Lewis (841), '14 Matt Costello (839), '13 Gabriel Olaseni (834), '11 D.J. Stephens (829), '13 Jon Horford (827)] - Lee is all potential at this point after spending a couple years behind Karl-Anthony Towns, Willie Cauley-Stein, and Julius Randle.  The comparables aren't flattering, but that's to be expected with his lack of run as an underclassman.  It seems unlikely that Lee will get drafted at this spot.  If he puts that 7'3" wingspan to good use, he'll go much higher; otherwise, he'll spend a fourth year in Lexington.

#27: Taurean Prince, Baylor [Similar: '15 Dorian Finney-Smith (909), '10 Justin Harper (887), '13 Marshawn Powell (874), '13 Jamil Wilson (871), '13 Cleanthony Early (866)] - Prince has comparables to 2014 second round pick Early and fellow 2016 prospect Finney-Smith.  Prince profiles well as the type of "3 and D" wing currently en vogue in the NBA.  A long, 6-7 athlete, Prince defends well and improved to over 40% from three last year.  Prince also shot a career low 64% from the charity stripe, much lower than would be expected for a sharpshooter, so it remains to be seen whether that shooting prowess will hold up.

#26: Chinanu Onuaku, Louisville [Similar: '11 Fab Melo (854), '12 Rakeem Christmas (842), '11 Baye Moussa Keita (836), '09 Frank Ben-Eze (832), '14 Kenneth Lowe (829)] - It's clear Onuaku should be at Syracuse.  His brother Arinze starred there several years ago, and his top three comparables are all Orangemen.  But of those three, only Melo wound up close to an NBA prospect, and he played only six games for the Celtics after being a first round pick.  This Onuaku showed defensive presence, but is probably best described as the proverbial project.  Some of those lottery tickets will hit, and Onuaku should at least beat out Mangok Mathiang at the 5 for Louisville, which will give him a chance to demonstrate what his payoff is likely to be at the next level.

#25: Kennedy Meeks, North Carolina [Similar: '13 Jerrell Wright (926), '11 Tim Williams (916), '14 Brice Johnson (909), '13 Alex Len (903), '15 Jalen Reynolds (902)] - Meeks had a fine second season.  After dropping a significant amount of weight in the offseason, Meeks kept his efficiency numbers stable while playing six more minutes a game for a deep UNC frontcourt.  Alex Len was a top five pick after his sophomore season, but at 7-0 Len is a different animal, as is Brice Johnson, though all three are high-quality players.  UNC is a balanced team expected to contend nationally, so it remains to be seen if Meeks can distinguish himself this season.

#24: Jake Layman, Maryland [Similar: '12 E.J. Singler (915), '15 Michael Qualls (911), '11 Kris Joseph (909), '12 Christian Watford (907), '12 Hollis Thompson (906)] - Layman's combination of size, athleticism, and shooting can make scouts salivate. His comps include Thompson, a regular for the woeful 76ers the past two seasons, and Joseph, who had a cup of coffee after being drafted.  Layman struggled in the last few weeks of the season, but showed an increased willingness and ability to drive to the basket and do more offensively than pick his spots to snipe from the outside.  He also held his own on the boards against stronger interior players after moving down a spot to mostly play the four.  His skills aren't in doubt, but refining them in his last season could make him a no-brainer first round selection.

#23: Justin Jackson, North Carolina [Similar: '11 Jeremy Lamb (899), '13 Sam Dekker (893), '13 Georges Niang (882), '09 Matt Gatens (878), '14 Zach LaVine (877)] -  Jackson scored well as a freshman for the Tar Heels last year and improved his shooting late in the season, knocking down 11 of 23 threes in postseason play.  Jackson's most similar players are an excellent list with three NBA players and Wooden Award contender Niang.  Jackson has great size and length, and when coupled with his basketball instincts, he could shoot up the draft board.  The goals for his second season will be to get his body more NBA-ready and show more consistency with his outside shooting.

#22: Domantas Sabonis, Gonzaga [Similar: '11 Kourtney Roberson (841), '15 Jakob Poeltl (837), '13 Brandon Ashley (835), '11 Dartaye Ruffin (834), '13 Perry Ellis (826)] - Sabonis is the son of the best NBA player who never was, Lithuanian legend Arvydas Sabonis.  This Sabonis was a key reserve on one of the best front lines in the nation last year, scoring effectively inside and contending with the likes of Rico Gathers and Karl-Anthony Towns for the title of best two-way rebounder in college basketball.  Sabonis' comps have lower scores than anyone else on the list, underscoring his uniqueness.  Despite being 6-10 he was no rim protector at all, blocking only 11 shots in 38 games.

#21: Nigel Hayes, Wisconsin [Similar: '14 Perry Ellis (876), '15 Josh Hart (864), '10 Marcus Morris (860), '14 Sam Dekker (858), '14 Jerami Grant (852)] - Hayes was a somewhat forgotten third man at times on last year's excellent Badgers team, taking a back seat to Wooden Award winner Frank Kaminsky and JR NBA prospect Sam Dekker, but Hayes was crucial to their success.  A versatile scorer, the 6-8 Hayes went from not attempting a three point his freshman season to taking 101 last year, making 40.  Hayes needs to prove that he isn't an NBA tweener, too small to play the "4" and not athletic enough for the "3".  Only just an average rebounder, and not a shot-blocking threat, Hayes has those areas to address if he wants to be able to slide inside in the NBA.  His comparable list is eclectic, but strong, with the latter three were all drafted early out of college.

#20: Troy Williams, Indiana [Similar: '13 Seth Tuttle (904), '11 Elias Harris (897), '11 Ian Hummer (896), '15 Jarell Martin (888), '11 Julian Boyd (886)] -  Troy Williams is a man who can dunk the ball.  He will dunk it, and when he does, it will not rim out.  Williams can get to the basket and score as well as any wing in the country and rebounds like a demon for a 6-7 player, but needs to expand his game to the outside and make more than six threes.

#19: Caris LeVert, Michigan [Similar: '12 Mark Lyons (884), '09 Matt Janning (884), '10 Marcus Relphorde (878), '14 Matt Carlino (877), '12 Eric Mosley (876)] - The athletic Canadian lost much of last year to an injury and his return to Ann Arbor was one of the bigger surprises of draft season.  His relative lack of minutes last year make his comp list virtually worthless. LeVert scores, rebounds and makes plays as a versatile backcourt player.  This is the same slot that another versatile senior guard, Jerami Grant, went last year.  If LeVert has the same impact for Michigan that Grant had for Notre Dame, this projection will hit.

#17 Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk, Kansas [Similar: '15 Robbie Berwick (907), '09 Deividas Dulkys (895), '15 Corey Henderson (888), '13 Josh Fortune (886), '12 T.J. Sapp (886)] - The 6-8 Ukrainian has a reputation as a fine athlete and a talented shooter, but he showed very little of that in his first year in Lawrence.  That's fine considering Mykhailiuk turned 18 only two months ago so failing to crack a talented Kansas rotation last year shouldn't have been a surprise.  He'll have plenty of chances to shine in the next eight months.  A spot on the wing is his to grab this year with Kelly Oubre leaving for the NBA.

#16: Damian Jones, Vanderbilt [Similar: '10 Samardo Samuels (898), '12 C.J. Leslie (894), '10 Robert Sacre (890), '14 Przemek Karnowski (876), '09 A.J. Ogilvy (872)] - Leslie and Samuels are most well known as former top 10 recruits whose NBA careers were essentially dead from the start.  Jones was a much more unheralded recruit and stayed under the radar playing for a mediocre Vandy team the past two years.  Jones has a rep as a long, 6-10 player who will live on shot-blocking and rebounding at the next level, but his work on the glass has been just OK (24th in the SEC in defensive rebounding).  On the surface he seems like a less interesting big man prospect than a guy like AJ Hammons, but having just turned 20 in June he's a "young" junior with time to grow his game.

#14: Demetrius Jackson, Notre Dame [ Similar: '13 Kevin Pangos (899), '09 Steven Gray (877), '15 Monte Morris (875), '09 Austin Freeman (874), '15 Steve Vasturia (867)] - Jackson took a back seat to Jerami Grant on last year's Fighting Irish both as a team leader and ballhandler.  With Grant having graduated and moved onto the NBA, now is the time for Jackson to prove his mettle.  A lottery spot feels a bit high for a 6-1 guard who hasn't quite made his mark as a passer yet (15.4 assist rate), and the comparable list leans much more heavily towards "quality college guard" than "NBA starter".  On the other hand, a highlight reel naming him the "Next Russell Westbrook" is a good addition to the resume.

#10: Jakob Poeltl, Utah [Similar: '15 Cliff Alexander (862), '10 Derrick Favors (853), '13 Sim Bhullar (847), '13 Steven Adams (838), '15 Domantas Sabonis (837)] - The big Austrian is an early lottery favorite because of a great combination of size (7-0), rebounding, shot blocking, and offensive acumen (9.1 ppg on 68% shooting), and while none of those five feel quite right as a comparison - except perhaps the international flavor - it's a good sign that the list includes two current NBAers (Adams and Favors), a guy who got a cup of coffee last year as a rookie (Bhullar) and another potential 2016 or 2017 pick (Sabonis).  He'll need to show an expanded offensive game away from the basket both for his draft stock and for Utah after losing Delon Wright to graduation.

#8: Kris Dunn, Providence [Similar: '13 Derrick Marks (851), '09 Nick Calathes (843), '11 Darius Morris (841), '14 Maurice Watson (834), '11 D.J. Cooper (832)] - Dunn doesn't have a very close comparable group which speaks to the unique mix (and level) of talents.  Calathes and Morris were both stat sheet stuffers in college and have bounced around the NBA, but both were far from the lottery.  Dunn is an athlete, a finisher, a ball-hawking defender and a tremendous passing point guard, leading the NCAA with a 50.0 assist rate.  His shooting needs to improve, but he took the first step in last year's breakout campaign.

Terps Schedule Smart

Three years ago Maryland wound up in the NIT at 22-12.  Much like everything else, it happened for a number of reasons (like an 8-10 ACC record), but the team was widely considered off the bubble by Selection Sunday after a strong ACC performance in large part due to a weak RPI driven down by a horrendous non-conference Strength of Schedule - 299th in the nation.  That's often a death knell for a power conference bubble team and seed deflater to those in the field.

Ten guarantee games will crush a team's SOS, but Mark Turgeon and staff deserve a ton of credit for recognizing and addressing that over the past couple of years, putting together stronger schedules that ranked 113th and 82nd overall.  The strategy looks to have been a blend of more premier opponents, mid-majors and stronger low-majors replacing games against the dregs of Division I, and some good scheduling fortune, like Ohio State and Virginia replacing Northwestern in the ACC-B1G challenge. The 2015 non-conference schedule was released earlier this week, and this looks like the best one yet.

The three premier games are @ North Carolina, UConn (Jimmy V Classic), and Georgetown.  All three should be improved over last year with North Carolina a national contender and the other two possibly contending for top 20 rankings.  The Cancun Challenge field isn't sexy, but all three of Illinois State, TCU, and Rhode Island all ranked in the kenpom top 75.  All told, only a home game against Marshall (11-21) is against a team with a sub-.500 record last year:

Team	W	L
North Carolina	26	12
Georgetown	22	11
Uconn	20	15
Illinois State	22	13
TCU	18	15
UMES	18	15
Princeton	16	14
Marshall	11	21
St Francis (NY)	23	12
Mount St. Mary's	15	15
Cleveland State	19	15
Rider	21	12
	231	170
Overall SOS		0.5760598504

That NC SOS would have been 16th in the country last year.  Five of the twelve games being played away from home, including Princeton at Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore, help as well.  The Terps look like a national power on the court next year, and their schedule looks to set them up to be seeded as such even if they lose a game or two more than expected.

Maryland's Got Talent

Things are falling into place.  Melo Trimble and Jake Layman passed on the NBA Draft to come back.  Robert Carter Jr. continues to lurk as an infusion of talent on the interior as soon as he's eligible next fall.  Diamond Stone spurned his hometown Badgers to join the Terps.  Rasheed Sulaimon is in, too.  He brings some questions after his dismissal from Duke last year, but there's no question that he's talented.

Talent is a loaded word.  Sometimes it means how many stars a recruit was coming into college, which is often a good proxy, but there are many counterexamples.  Other times it applies to certain skills.  A top shooter or scorer will get the nod as talented, but great defenders like Tony Allen or great rebounders like Dennis Rodman get called role players.  Again, fair to some extent, but it doesn't tell the full story.

I only add that digression because I'm going to make a bold claim -- next year's roster may be the most talented in school history, either one through five or one through ten.  To make that claim we need to look at the past contenders for that title.  Many are obvious, but the metric I'm going to use is NBA games played.  That means that for this exercise Steve Blake is "more talented" than Juan Dixon, which certainly wasn't the case here in the early 2000s, but nothing is perfect.

In broad strokes, the amount of NBA players on a college roster and the impact that they had at the pro level is a good view of the talent a team has.  Villanova was correctly a #1 seed last year (early exit be damned) over Arizona, but there's not much doubt which roster close followers of college basketball would say was more talented.  Ryan Arcidiacano might have shared the Big East Player of the Year award, but his NBA career arc is likely more Gerry McNamara than Kyle Lowry, as far as Big East point guards go.

So let's look at the ten most talented rosters in Maryland history, as judged by career NBA games played.

10) 1990 (1,596 games) - Gary Williams' first team wasn't lacking for talent.  The three leading scorers were Walt Williams (7th pick in 1992), Jerrod Mustaf (17th pick in 1990), and longtime NBA journeyman Tony Massenburg.  Evers Burns, another rotation player, would get a cup of coffee in the NBA.  Despite that roster, the Terps finished just 6-8 in the ACC and played in the NIT, but that was a vast improvement over the previous year's team that went 1-13 in the ACC with a similar roster under Bob Wade.

T-8) 1979 and 1980 (1,841 games) - Only two players from this team made it to the NBA, but both had long careers.  Albert King (10th overall) and Buck Williams (3rd overall) both went high in the draft in 1981.  Williams has a strong case for best pro career by a Terp, averaging a career double-double, and snagging Rookie of the Year and several All-Defensive Team honors over his 17 year career with the Nets, Trailblazers and Knicks.

7) 1975 (2,027 games) - While Tom McMillen and Len Elmore had graduated, this was another strong team in the Golden Age of Lefty Driesell, posting a 24-5 record and making the Elite Eight behind a tremendous backcourt of John Lucas and Brad Davis.  Both men would have long careers as NBA point guards, and hold the distinction of being the first four year stars for the Terps after the rule against freshman ineligibility was lifted in advance of Lucas' first season.

6) 2002 (2,038 games and counting) - The most famous team in school history, winners of its only basketball National Championship, checks in at just 6th on the list, though with Steve Blake still playing, this group will rise in the rankings.  Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter had modest NBA careers considering their stellar, four-year careers in College Park, but coming out of college, most realized that their physical gifts lagged behind their skills.  Chris Wilcox did have those gifts, but his skills didn't catch up enough for him to be more than a useful NBA player over his eleven years in the league.

5) 1976 (2,040 games) - Lucas and Davis returned from the 1975 team, and the five leaders in minutes played all spent time in the NBA, including Steve Sheppard, Lawrence Boston and Mo Howard.  The team itself was a disappointment, though.  The 22-6 record wasn't as good as the year before, and despite spending eight consecutive weeks at #2 in the AP Poll, spent the postseason at home.  While the tournament had expanded to 32 a year prior to include at-large selections, each conference was still limited to two selections.  After 6th seeded Virginia surprisingly won the ACC Tournament, #8 North Carolina was selected as the league's at-large instead of #11 Maryland.

4) 1981 (2,075 games) - Two things emerge from this list - talented Lefty Driesell teams that disappointed on the court.  This was the same King/Williams squad from earlier in the list, adding eventual NBA pick Charles Pittman inside, that grabbed a #2 seed in 1980.  Despite a preseason #4 ranking in the AP Poll, the Terps sputtered to a 21-10 season before being crushed by Indiana in the second round of the NCAA Tournament as a #6 seed.

3) 2001 (2,177 games) - Add Terence Morris to the 2002 National Championship game and you've got the roster for this one.  Morris had a disappointing pro career compared to predictions earlier in his college career, playing just parts of three seasons with the Rockets and Magic.  Morris averaged over 15 per game his sophomore and junior seasons and was 1st-Team All ACC his sophomore year.  He was also 6-9 with perimeter skills, a rarer combination 15 years ago.  Despite that, Morris stayed four years, and had a down season statistically his senior year as the team made it's first Final Four.  He would drop from a projected high first round pick to a second round guy and most of his best pro success came in Europe.

2) 1974 (2,347 games) - Tom McMillen, Len Elmore, John Lucas,  The Greatest Game Ever Played (fittingly, a Terps loss).  Finishing the year ranked in the top 5 in the country but at home for the postseason because only one team per conference could make the NCAA Tournament and the team declined an NIT bid, having won that tournament two years ago with the same group.  Maryland fans are among the best at paying the What If? game, and while alternate worlds where Len Bias lives and Moses Malone makes it to campus are prominently featured, perhaps none is talked about more than the idea of at-large bids in the early 1970s.  The 1972 and 1974 team went a combined 46-10 those two years, playing in the ACC, but never got the chance to play for a National Championship.

1) 1973 (2,403 games): This was the 1974 team plus Jim O'Brien, a Small Forward who played 58 games in the ABA.  O'Brien was actually the second leading scorer for the team, ahead of Lucas and Elmore.  This team was 20 minutes from a Final Four before eventually falling to Providence.  Close but no cigar.

To the Draft

The Coaching Carousel is still spinning with Billy Donovan moving from his longtime home at Florida to new challenges with the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the transfer recruiting market continues on, but one facet of college basketball's hot stove league wrapped up at the end of last month as the deadline to declare for the NBA Draft passed.

The off season seemed to start with almost every key underclassmen declaring that they'd be going pro.  Duke's three and Kentucky's seven led the way early, and upper lottery picks D'Angelo Russell and Stanley Johnson confirmed the obvious late in the cycle.  The annual WTF entries were present, too.  Former Maryland reserve Ashton Pankey got a degree and had a fine season for MAAC Champ Manhattan this year, his fifth in college, and decided to leave a year of eligibility on the table to pursue an NBA career.  Pankey has no chance of being drafted, of course, but with former teammates Jordan Williams and Terrell Stoglin declaring early in the past few years, Gary Williams' last team somehow has the distinction of having three early entries on the roster.  Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

Anyway, 48 guys put their name on the list, the third highest total of the nine years we've had the One and Done rule.

2007	2008	2009	2010	45	48	2013	2014	2015
32	38	39	50	44	49	46	45	48

Things look a little "worse" (for a college basketball fan) when you concentrate on only the major conference players.  The mid-majors (and below) have some first round talent among this year's crop of early entrants like Cameron Payne of Murray State and Georgia State's RJ Hunter, who created this year's March Madness Moment, but the lion's share of NBA Draft talent is obviously in the Power 6. 36 power conference players declared early, tied for the most in the last nine years.

2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
23	26	26	32	33	36	30	36	36

Who was hurt most?  The SEC had a staggering 13 players declare early.  We all know about Kentucky's 7 players, but Arkansas, LSU  and even lowly Florida had a pair as well.  Fringe prospects like Tyler Ulis and Dorian Finney-Smith are the best of the bunch returning to school next season.

ACC	Pac-12	SEC	Big Ten	Big XII	Big East
11	5	13	4	3	0

The Big East didn't have a single player leave early.  It was a senior laden conference last year, with only D'vauntes Smith-Rivera of Georgetown and Providence's Kris Dunn seriously considering throwing their names into the ring.  There's a lot of talk about what the future holds for the newly configured Big East and so it will be interesting to see whether the lack of high end talent continues.  The conference landed only two of the top 45 players in the 2015 recruiting class.

One trend emerges when you look at the entire nine years of data concerns the Big Ten.  The conference has been struck by far fewer early entries than peer conferences at just 3 a year, while other power conferences average 5.5 a year.  It might not sound like a huge difference, but imagine how different the perception of the B1G would be heading into next season if Melo Trimble and Caris LeVert decided to enter their names into the draft.  Two players won't kill a league, but it can go a long way to dropping it in from first to third in the mythical league power rankings the following winter.

Grad Transfers

Transfers are ruining college basketball.

Alright, now that we've got the Coaches' Viewpoint out of the the way, let's talk about transfers. Player movement in college basketball is seemingly at an all-time high.  That's been a theme for several seasons now, and it might best be exemplified by the relatively new, but still rapidly expanding, graduate transfer loophole, which allows any player with an undergraduate degree and eligibility left to transfer to a new school, free from the restraints of the "year in residence" the NCAA requires traditional transfers to sit out from competition.

The appeal is easy to see.  Big-time programs can poach from lesser ones with somewhat proven commodities who can come in immediately and address needs, almost certainly faster than the lightly recruited high school players still floating around in the spring after the season ends.  But one question remains - just how effective are these players when they move to their new schools.

Using Luke Winn's outstanding research as a starting point and filling some gaps with Jeff Goodman's exhaustive transfer list, I put together a list of players who used the graduate transfer exemption to transfer "up" over the last four seasons, where transferring up is defined (by Winn) as going from a mid or low-major to a power conference school, or transferring from a major program to a blue blood.

The graduate transfer exception has been used by major programs at every level.  While Duke hasn't dipped their toes into the water just yet, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Kansas all have, and UCLA attempted to bring in Jon Octeus from Colorado State before he was denied admission and wound up at Purdue.  2012 National Champ Louisville will bring in its first graduate transfer in Cleveland State's Trey Lewis.

Oregon and Boston College have brought in the most grad transfers at four apiece, followed by Illinois, Purdue, Tennessee and Fred Hoiberg's transfer factory, Iowa State at three each.  Auburn, Indiana, Maryland, UConn, USC and Wake Forest have all brought in multiple grad transfers.  UConn just locked up its third in former Cornell Forward Shonn Miller, and Maryland is trailing Damion Lee, the star of this year's transfer menu.

By and large, these players are performing well when they move up a level.  Taking out of the equation a few players like Jon Horford (Michigan to Florida) and Justin Knox (Alabama to North Carolina) who already had power conference experience, I looked at the year-to-year changes after players moved to the big-time, focusing on three categories: ORtg (to judge efficiency), Poss% (to judge how involved they were) and Mins% (to see if they were more than benchwarmers).



So that's promising.  ORtg actually increases at the higher level in season 2, although that's offset by a drop in usage and playing time.  You probably need to be a little careful in projecting this out going forward since we don't know what the increased pool of graduate transfers will do to the quality of that pool.  If schools are currently drawing a random sample from, say, the top 5% of mid-major and low-major players, will they draw more players from that same pool or reach down further in the hopes of landing a one year band-aid.  Tough to say, but I'd guess the latter happens a bit more frequently as the grad transfer continues to proliferate.

And here's the list for reference.

On Luck

Maryland does it again.  For the school record 26th time this regular season they won a game, and for the tenth time in ten tries, the team won a game decided by one or two possessions.  That leads to an interesting situation for a 26-5 Big Ten team ranked #8 in both polls and top 10 in the RPI -- the computers hate them.  Ken Pomeroy's laptop continues to blatantly disrespect the team's skills, ranking them a paltry 32nd in the land, while Jeff Sagarin's iMac has the team at #25 and Basketball on Paper author (basketball is played on a court, guys) Dean Oliver's ESPN BPI splits the difference at #28.

Obviously I love the metrics, but there's a natural uproar from Maryland fans who feel disrespected by the computer rankings, offering a number of reasons why the Terps are so good in close games.  Some of them boil down to little more than the typical "grit arguments", but some are a bit more intriguing.  The one that gets mentioned most frequently is probably the Free Throw Postulate.  It states, roughly, that Maryland isn't lucky because they have a such a big spread between their FT% (one of the best in the country) and their opponents' (one of the the worst).  For the most part, the close wins this year were Maryland staving off a furious comeback by taking care of the ball and getting theirs at the foul line. To that end I looked at some data from teamrankings.com, comparing FT% and winning% in close games, where "close" is defined as final margin of < 5.  Then I graphed it.  Here's what that graph looked like for the 351 DI teams this year:

[caption id="attachment_335" align="alignnone" width="625"] source: teamrankings.com[/caption]

So there's a slight positive relationship, not a strong correlation, but the trend line says that the worst foul shooting team wins 40% of its close games and the best foul shooting team wins 60%.  That's one game above the 5-5 median for a team on the far right hand portion of the graph.

The common misconception is that the Terrapins are ranked low in the computers because they're being penalized for the luck of winning close games.  That's not really true.  When Maryland beat Michigan State 68-66 earlier this year in East Lansing, it was probably lucky to escape from the Breslin Center with a win, but the computers didn't really care.  Their algorithms would say that regardless of whether you flipped that score, Maryland had played a good game and would be "rewarded" by the computers.

Conversely, it doesn't really matter that the Terps were on the right side of close games against Penn State or Northwestern.  It's obviously better to have won those games for any number of reasons, but the computers downgraded Maryland because they played so many close games against inferior competition, even going back to the beginning of the season when they struggled with USC-Upstate and couldn't put away Monmouth.  Top 10 or 15 teams might occasionally play down to their competition, but struggling every time out against the dregs of the conference means is a good sign a team's record is inflated.

Bottom line: The Terps are good, but there's good reason not to believe the record at face value.