Top Hoopus Prospects and their Strength of Schedule
by jianfu on Jun 13, 2009 5:10 PM CDT
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PrintI posted this over in the "Jackson'd!!!" comments, but I'm going to make it a FanPost of it, too. Because level of competition makes a difference!
Now that we have a Hoopus Consensus Top 10 Draft board, I thought this would be a good time to look into the level of competition these guys faced. I think all of us, at least at some level, are looking into these guys' numbers to try to separate them. I think you can't do that without doing some accounting for the context these guys were playing in.
According to Pomeroy, here’s the strength of schedule ranks for the Hoopus draft board members teams:
1) Oklahoma (Blake Griffen): #37
2) Rubio N/A
3) Arizona State (James Harden): #20
4) Davidson (Stephen Curry): #223 (ouch! Although played well in tourney last year)
5) UConn (Hasheem Thabeet): #18
6) Memphis (Tyreke Evans): #65
7) Southern California (Demar DeRozan): #6 (!)
8) Brandon Jennings n/a
9) UCLA (Jrue Holiday): #35
10) Syracuse (Jonny Flynn): #2 (!!!)
As for the candidates trying to make our illustrious board:
Louisville (Earl Clark and Terrence Williams): #15
Duke (Gerald Henderson): #13
UNC (Ty Lawson): #12
Arizona (Jordan Hill): #7
Gonzaga (Austin Daye): #80
Obviously you can get even more detailed and analyze how prospects did in games they had an opportunity to against top competition (e.g., Curry?), but short of that, maybe this is a big feather in the cap for DeRozan and Flynn.
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Actually, looking over that page, I have to note that in fairness to Austin Daye and the Zags, they played a brutal non-conference schedule (according to Pomeroy): 5th toughest in the nation. That makes sense thinking back to last fall. Their poor overall rank is due to being in the WAC.
And, yes, Curry’s SOS becomes a little less concerning considering Davidson played the #23 SOS outside of their conference. Their conference is just the pits. Still worth noting, though. How you balance his performance against for the most part sub par competition with the fact the guy faced defensive schemes that would make George Mikan blush, I don’t know…
Tyreke Evans still has a big red flag in this area, though. Memphis #65 SOS overall doesn’t get that much of a cushion considering their non-conference SOS ranked #38.
Evans vs. DeRozan
This strength of schedule issue just points to another chink in Evans’ armor. God I don’t like him for us. I get the mismatch potential if he’s at the point and we have another big guard next to him. But his defender will simply sag back and dare him to shoot it from outside. That shot is broke – period. DeRozan at least has good mechanics, and is already well above average from about 18 feet in. Look at his last 8 games:
18.5 PPG
57 FG%
33 3PT%
6 FTA’s per game
6.4 RPG
2.5 APG
1.75 TOs per game
Solid stuff considering the fact that most of these outings were in the Pac-10 tourney and NCAA tourney. I love the fact that he improved as the lights got brighter and the competition sharper. UCLA, MSU, and ASU were three of those games and he played well in all of them. And this was all done within the methodical USC offense and without a great playmaker at the PG slot.
This is fantastic...
..thanks for putting it together.
The World's Leading Exporter of Small Area Quickness
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No prob. It only took a couple minutes…
Ideally we could all find a way to accurately capture this sort of thing into measures such as your prospect formula. I just went back and reviewed the guard list, and noticed Flynn was one spot behind Evans. I imagine this would probably elevate him. (In other words, if you traded Flynn and Evans prior to the season, what sort of numbers would Flynn have posted playing Memphis’ schedule, and vice versa.) I’m not sure exactly how much weight we can put into things like SOS (probably not as much as they do in baseball prospect analysis, where EVERYTHING gets viewed through the prism of context), but it’s probably underrated in basketball at the NCAA level.
I’m beginning to think Flynn’s a legit lotto prospect in this draft. I had some doubts about him, and still do, but the guy’s in the conversation, anyway. And now, considering he was the key player and team leader on a very good team that played as tough a slate as anyone in the country, he’s probably up there.
And I agree with Rascal that DeRozan should be ahead of Evans (he was for me, anyway, but as he/she said, this is just another chink in Evans’ armor: It just seems the more and more we learn about him, the less there is to be enthusiastic about). And Rascal’s right about DeRozan’s shot: it is incredibly smooth, particularly for a guy who as a recruit coming in was considered mainly a dunker. I don’t think his ceiling’s as high as people thought it was when he came out of high school, but I still think he has a shot at becoming a Maggette-like wing.
At this point, if Harden and Curry are both off the table, I think taking DeRozan at #6 and then working with the remaining picks/assets to try to move up into the latter part of the lotto and land a PG from the Flynn/Jennings/Lawson camp would be a decent scenario. That still might be a whole lot of nothing 3 years from now, but you got to work with what you have.
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