What Offseason?
Welcome back to the Hoop Vision Weekly!
Inside this week's edition:
We can't promise "full clarity" but we will deliver some insights around how returning to school affects a player's role at the college level by looking at last year's "test the waters" group.
Also today: the real, actual conclusion to our month-long Transfer Series, with a handful of Division I coaches chiming in on how their program approaches opportunities to add players, evaluates players, and determines whether there might be a program fit.
Plus, plenty of links to video, audio, and articles worth your time (or worth another look).
Here we go...
DRAFT (DEADLINE) DAY
While we don't often discuss the NBA Draft in this space, we'll mix it up a bit today and test the waters (hah!) today, after the early entrant deadline came and went this week. We now know which underclassmen (88 in total) are going pro, and which are returning to school (89); here's the full list, via NBC Sports.
When the college hoops community at large evaluates a player’s decision to declare for the NBA Draft or return to school, there’s one specific aspect of that discussion which bothers me.
The decision to return often gets framed as one with little risk beyond a potential injury, but this school of thought ignores the fact that age is an extremely important variable in the prospect evaluation process.
From a risk-reward standpoint, a player can’t bolster his stock simply by improving when he goes back to school -- he needs to improve beyond the average improvement that the typical player makes. Improvement is expected for any player returning for another season, not just those who send a letter to the NBA office and later rescind their Draft declaration. It should be (and absolutely is) factored into the decision-making and modeling process for NBA teams.
To set the stage, here’s the average improvement for returning non-transfer players since 2012:
Of note: the chart above measures percent increase in usage rate (e.g. if 10% usage jumped to 20% = 100% change). Translation here: the average returning sophomore uses only four additional possessions of every 100.
The “sophomore slump” doesn’t appear to hold much weight in college basketball. The biggest average improvements in both role (usage rate) and efficiency (offensive rating) actually happen during sophomore seasons.
Again, any good evaluator should be taking this into account. So when EJ Montgomery decided to return to Kentucky for his sophomore season, there is likely more risk involved than some think. If he increases his usage rate by 4% (and all else stays equal), then he’s theoretically not really improving his draft stock -- he’s just maintaining it.
Let’s take a look back at the chart I tweeted this week to show the usage and efficiency change (note: I used raw differences instead of the percent change used in the table above) of just the 2018 NBA draft early entrants that decided instead to return to school:
For those select 92 players, their usage rate increased by an average of 3% and their offensive rating actually decreased 1% on average. (Note: the median is pretty much identical to mean here)
I think the decline in offensive rating is an important point to highlight here.
This year, consider former Virginia star Kyle Guy. He’s unlikely to be drafted, but decided to leave school regardless to begin his professional career. Guy has a very specific skill set -- he excels in running off screens, moves well without the ball, hits shots, and he was probably one of the five best players in the country this season in that specific role.
But Guy’s skill set certainly doesn’t appear to be a great fit for a larger (more ball dominant) role. With Virginia losing their on-ball creators in Ty Jerome and De’Andre Hunter, I would have expected Guy to see at least a slight increase in usage - but potentially a bigger drop in efficiency. At the very least, there was a lot of risk for Kyle Guy staying and playing in a new role.
That’s not to say that returning is without potential reward, and Jarrett Culver is the poster boy for that. Culver basically maintained his offensive efficiency while becoming the clear go-to-guy for Texas Tech; now he is a lock to go in the first ten picks. On the other hand, Jalen McDaniels’ increased sophomore role at San Diego State didn’t go nearly as seamlessly from an efficiency standpoint...
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TESTING THE WATERS -- 2018-19 STANDOUTS
BIGGEST JUMPS IN USAGE UPON RETURN
Phil Booth (Sr, Villanova || +33.9% increase in usage rate vs. prev year)
Jarrett Culver (Soph, Texas Tech || +33.5% jump in usage rate)
Jalen McDaniels (Soph, San Diego State || +33%)
Eric Paschall (Sr, Villanova || +26.5%)
Sagaba Konate (Jr, West Virginia || +25.7%)
BIGGEST JUMPS IN EFFICIENCY UPON RETURN
Nojel Eastern (Soph, Purdue || +16.5% improvement in ORtg)
Lamar Peters (Jr, Mississippi State || +10.6% ORtg)
Shamorie Ponds (Jr, St. John's || +10.1%)
Kerwin Roach (Sr, Texas || +9.3%)
PJ Washington (Soph, Kentucky || +9.1%)
TRANSFERS: Coaches Speak
To close out this extended series looking into transfers and the impact the transfer scene is having on college basketball, we spoke with a small handful of Division I coaches and asked a few very basic questions.
Past issues in this series:
Part 1: Overall transfer numbers and impact of coaching changes
Part 3: Performance of "up-transfers" and graduate transfers
Part 4: Oddities -- following a coach + keeping a program's core intact
While some of the conversations veered slightly off these questions, here were the three questions we asked:
1) Does your program recruit transfers? Why or why not?
2) Briefly explain your program’s info-gathering + evaluation process.
3) Do you prefer sit-out or graduate transfers?
An extended look will be coming in a blog post this week (keep an eye out on Twitter for the link), but a select few highlights from these chats are below. And while they are not commenting on any specific cases here, we still gave coaches the right to anonymity -- but included their conference:
"Our program recruits transfers for two reasons; the first is to stay old. It’s very hard to win at a high level with too many freshman or building your program with freshmen nowadays. The second reason is that it’s a way to recruit high-major talent while competing at a mid-major level. Usually for whatever reason, there are solid kids with high-major talent who didn’t work at blue blood schools, and you can get them on a bounce back."
(Conference USA)
"Before we recruit a transfer, we need to understand the academic profile, family background, reasons why they’re leaving the previous institution. Those are the first ones; if the academics are shot, we can’t go any further."
(MAAC)
"We want to know everything because if you bring in the wrong kid, it can damage your program. Our staff will watch his best and worst games; we break down his game individually and develop an on-court plan for the player."
(AAC)
SPRING READING / VIEWING
To start this week, we'll throw it back to an early-season video about a top-line NBA Draft prospect whom we didn't get much of a chance to see in his lone college season.
Yes, you got it -- that would be Bol Bol. The 7-foot-3 prospect has insane measurables and undeniable talent, but will he be able to do "the little things" that NBA coaches demand on the floor and preach about in press conferences? Does it even matter?
Hoops: Tactical
“Stephen Curry's chase for perfection and the wild world of shot analytics”
(Tom Haberstroh, NBC Sports -- published Thursday)
With Stephen Curry shooting 94% from the foul line (94-of-100) in this year's NBA Playoffs, Haberstroh presents a thorough, entertaining account on how Curry emphasizes free throws to end workouts (must hit 10 in a row, 5+ swishes before ending training) and even competes with Steve Kerr in free throw competitions. Then, Haberstroh presents a wider look into the world of shooting analytics, shot tracking technology, and how players and teams are utilizing this sort of data and training approach.
Hoops: Non-Tactical
"Interview with Jake Kelfer -- Pro Basketball Combine"
(Sean Moran, SeanMoHoops Podcast -- published last week)
The Pro Basketball Combine -- a third-year showcase event geared toward prospects who may be prime candidates for two-way deals or G-League roster spots -- happened in Los Angeles last weekend. Past participants include Antonio Blakeney (Chicago Bulls) and Charles Cooke (New Orleans Pelicans), while Isaiah Reese (Canisius), Dontay Caruthers (Buffalo) and Kenny Williams (North Carolina) were among this year's standouts. A couple days beforehand, Sean Moran spoke with PBC founder Jake Kelfer on how the event came to be, how he was able to attract both players and teams to the event, and how PBC is a bit different than other pro days and pre-draft showcase events, particularly with their approach to athletic testing and on-court performance data. (25 mins)
Non-Hoops
"Inside the Astros' cutting-edge approach to pitching development"
(Jake Kaplan, The Athletic ($) -- published Thursday)
Worth the read if you have a subscription to The Athletic and have any interest in baseball and/or sports analytics, in general. A comprehensive account of how the Houston Astros have embraced video technology and data-driven training to improve pitching mechanics. As the organization has fully jumped on board with the approach, the results have been definitive: at the major league level, the team's recent dominance included in a 2017 World Series title, along with this statistical jaw-dropper:
"Not only did the 2018 Astros lead the majors in total strikeouts and strikeouts per nine innings, but also their minor-league affiliates all the way from short-season Single A to Triple A led their leagues in the same categories."
Non-Hoops
"The Attention Economy Crisis"
(Joe Marchese, MediaREDEF -- published Wednesday)
Going outside the realm of sports for a moment (yes, a scary thought), media entrepreneur and executive Joe Marchese writes about the so-called "attention economy" -- the relationship between content and advertising -- actually drives the economy at large, due to the nature and power of advertising. He goes on to detail how the changes in digital measurement changes and the fracturing of this attention economy will likely lead to great changes in the media/content ecosystem as a whole.
And that's it for this week! Thanks for reading -- don't be alarmed if you notice a different design next week. Part of some under-the-hood work we'll be doing all summer!
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