The MAC Basketball Freshman of The Year Might Surprise You
by Matt Sussman on Feb 9, 2011 11:00 AM CST
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Coming into the season, Conventional Wisdsom felt that Central Michigan's Trey Zeigler, the super recruit who could've gone to Michigan or Michigan State, might not just be the best freshman in the MAC, but the best MAC player period. The inverse maybe the case. He's obviously not the best MACthlete (yet), but it's not even a foregone conclusion that he's the best freshman.
In fact, here's my off-the-cuff freshman rankings:
1. Javon McCrea, Buffalo
2. Reese Holliday, Toledo
3. Matt Stainbrook, WMU
4. Trey Zeigler, CMU
5. Juwan Howard Jr., WMU
6. Alex Abreu, Akron
This is subject to change (probably as soon as after tonight's games) but these are probably the six you'd fight over.
Something tells me Zeigler has the best chance to win the Freshman of the Year, mostly because total points are held in a higher regard over efficiency. (Not trying to stir up a stathead debate here.) Look, scoring 17 points a game is hard and admirable. But give many Division I scholarship kids 16 shots a night and he'll wind up with about 17 points. Ernie Zeigler has apparently given his son the green light to fire at will, and as a result he leads the MAC in field goal attempts. So the fact that he's fourth in the MAC in scoring as a freshman has him in the discussion.
Let's look at Ken Pomeroy's Offensive Rating, a complicated formula which measures a player's worth per 100 offensive possessions. There were 37 players who were "used" for at least 20 percent of a team's possessions, and here are their rankings and ratings:
1: McCrea: 117.9
4: Stainbrook: 111.3
15: Howard: 103.3
31: Holliday: 90.2
32: Abreu: 89.0
35: Zeigler: 87.6
37: Delino Dear, Toledo: 85.4
McCrea is doing it with fewer shots per game (about six), meaning he's more efficient (over 10 points per game) and is also rebounding, blocking, and defending like an upperclassman.
There are two others to watch who are starting to heat up during MAC play: Nick Kellogg from OHIO (another hoops pedigree!) who's gradually seeing more playing time at guard, and Ball State's Chris Bond, a hustleforward whose high field goal percentage and increased minutes have given him about 11 points in each of their last four games. Delino Dear also has some growth potential, but his minutes have gone down as the season aged and he's been erratic on the offensive end.
Okay ... let's not wait until tonight. Here's my freshman starting five. I'll put Abreu at the point, with Zeigler at shooting guard, and McCrea/Stainbrook as my forwards. My small forward is either Juwan Jr. or Holliday. Hell of a team that would be. Might even win the MAC West.
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I am biased but I go with McCrea
Two reasons: One is the per possession effectiveness that you mentioned. The other is the level of competition..
Against the West: Zeigler is averaging 18 points per game.
Against the East: Zeigler is averaging 14 points per game.
He also has more turnovers, fewer steals, and more fouls against the East…
Given he is all CMU has it’s pretty likely that with a second pass through the west he will be at 15+ points per game and will win it but if you had to choose between the two right now who would you rather have playing.
It's pretty obvious that it's McCrea.
I threw a post up today using Offensive Rating, Possession % (usage%, essentially) and Minute %. I used an ORtg of 83 as my “replacement” which is roughly the level of the 9th best player on each of the MAC teams this year (should look at more than one season, though. But I was thinking 85 would be the replacement level before I even looked at the data, so it makes sense, IMO). For freshman, here are how they rank in what’s called Points Over Replacement Per Adjusted Game (PORPAG; comes from The Only Colors, the MSU blog on SBN):
1. Javon McCrea – 2.99
2. Matt Stainbrook – 2.18
3. Nick Kellogg – 1.95
4. Juwan Howard – 1.67
5. Chris Bond – 1.65
6. Jesse Berry – 1.34
7. Nate Rucker – 0.99
8. Hayden Humes – 0.82
9. Cameron Black – 0.65
10. Reese Holliday – 0.61
11. Trey Zeigler – 0.60
Now, the lower you make the replacement level, the more someone can benefit from usage and minute % over the ORtg. Still, it can’t be underscored enough just how inefficient Zeigler and Holliday have been. They’re likely to get top-5 consideration in the real voting because of their raw numbers, but I’d rather have any of the guys ahead of them on the 11 I just listed than those two.
Being a WMU fan, I wanted to vote Stainbrook – and in almost any other year, a big man that is dominating the boards like he is, he’d be the winner – but McCrea is just too good this year.
I should note that my data uses the ORtg’s from KenPom that were updated through monday as I wrote the post last night.
Very cool stats!
I’m most surprised at how low Holliday ranks on this, and why Abreu is nowhere to be found. But the end result seems to be the same: McCrea.
Don't forget to hustle.
Abreu is right behind Zeigler at 0.48
Holliday’s only 37th in the MAC in effective field goal percentage and by-and-large, he’s been just as inefficient offensively at Zeigler. He’s just 4-of-19 from deep, and only shooting around 45% on his two’s where as the average in D1 is just about 47-48% on two’s.
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