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It's been well-chronicled that Miami RedHawks basketball has suffered heavy roster turnover. Ex-starters Antonio Ballard and Nick Winbush graduated. Orlando Williams is suspended in basketball purgatory. Allen Roberts has an owie. The team is a not-so-good 2-5 and I hope that Julian Mavunga upgraded his famous mechanical legs, because they're going to need those mythical apparati this season.
Actually, maybe they're already in use.
In this early season Mavunga leads the team in points and rebounds, naturally, but it's necessarily what percentage of his output that interests me. He's scoring 42.9% of the team's total outcome, which is tops in Division I basketball. The next hoggiest player is Savalance Townsend, netting 34.8% of Arkansas-Pine Bluff's point total.
Rebounds? Mavunga leads the country with 41.9% of the team's rebounds. Field goals? Yes, Mavunga leads that too: 34.5% of Miami's shots. Free throws? This is madness: Mavunga has taken 62.9% of the team's free throws. The next-highest percentage is 44%.
He's also averaging 39.0 minutes a game, fourth in the country.
It reminds me, in a warped way, of the Wally Szczerbiak-led team in 1998-99, in that Sczcerbiak took the meaning "led by example" to a perverse extreme. When Wally World reached the Sweet 16, he accounted for 35.8% of the team's season points and over half of their NCAA tournament scoring. The only difference is that the 2011-12 incarnation of the RedHawks isn't even a top-half MAC basketball team, but with all the miscellaneous absences from the team Mavunga is going to have one whale of a senior season, maintenance of mechanical legs withstanding.