I've seen plenty of posts on this board saying "so and so needs more minutes", "Why is Boals not starting player Y".

I've made the claim there's more to a player than the sum of their counting stats in the box score and you need to do more than score points to be a winning team. I say this openly as a person who claims that the ails of this team lie more in our defense and rebounding than anything about our shot-making or offensive abilities.

So, being an Engineer, I decided to dig into the data and see what it said. I've looked at all MAC players with at least 60 minutes played this year to date, 126 players total.

I'm using the following statistical categories, admitting that no statistic is perfect, nor tells the full picture - so all you can do is find the best statistics and look for trends:

1. Offensive Rating (An aggregated stat of all offensive stats to calculate # of points produced per 100 possessions - which normalizes it for pace of play - anything over 100 is "good" as it's producing more than 1 pt/possession)

2. Defensive Rating (An aggregated stat of all defensive stats to calculate # of points allowed per 100 possessions - which normalizes it for pace of play - anything under 100 is "good" as it's allowing less than 1 pt/possession)

3. OWS/40 (Offensive Win Shares per 40 minutes - OWS is another aggregated stat that estimates the # of team wins due to that players offense only, normalized to a full 40 minute per game basis - adjusts for both pace of play and minutes played)

4. DWS/40 (Defensive Win Shares per 40 minutes - DWS is another aggregated stat that estimates the # of team wins due to that players defense only, normalized to a full 40 minute per game basis - adjusts for both pace of play and minutes played)

5. WS/40 (Total Win Shares per 40 minutes - aggregate of OWS/40 and DWS/40)

6. OBPM (Offensive Box Plus/Minus - Estimate of points per 100 possessions a player contributes on offense above a league "average player" on a league "average team" - anything positive is by definition, above average)

7. DBPM (Defensive Box Plus/Minus - Estimate of points per 100 possessions a player saves on defense above a league "average player" on a league "average team" - anything positive is by definition, above average)

8. BPM (Box Plus/Minus - Sum of OBPM and DBPM)



Now that I have the data compiled I'll try to keep this updated throughout the season.

Update as of games played 8 January.

Displayed as Player - Value (Rank in MAC)

Defensive Rating

OHIO
1. Olumide Adelodun - 90.4 (8 of 126)
2. Dwight Wilson - 99.4 (35 of 126)
3. AJ Clayton - 100.6 (42 of 126)
4. Jaylin Hunter - 102.2 (48 of 126)
5. Ajay Sheldon - 103.4 (57 of 126)
6. Miles Brown - 103.6 (59 of 126)
7. Gabe Wiznitzer - 103.6 (60 of 126)
8. Aidan Hadaway - 103.9 (63 of 126)
9. DeVon Baker - 104.8 (68 of 126)
10. Ben Roderick - 105.6 (71 of 126)
11. AJ Brown - 107.4 (80 of 126)
12. Elmore James IV - 108.9 (89 of 126)

MAC
1. Malique Jacobs (Kent St) - 83.9
2. Chris Payton (Kent St) - 85.5
3. Miryne Thomas (Kent St) - 85.7
4. Amani Lyles (Akron) - 85.9
5. Cli'Ron Hornbeak (Kent St) - 87.6
6. Delrecco Gillespie (Kent St) - 88.4
7. Enrique Freeman (Akron) - 88.7
8. Olumide Adelodun (Ohio) - 90.4
9. Julius Rollins (Kent St) - 90.6
10. Sincere Carry (Kent St) - 91.2

Displayed as Player - Value (Rank in MAC)

DWS/40

OHIO
1. Olumide Adeldon - 0.123 (2 of 126)
2. Dwight Wilson - 0.072 (28 of 126)
3. AJ Clayton - 0.061 (42 of 126)
4. Jaylin Hunter - 0.057 (49 of 126)
5. Ajay Sheldon - 0.053 (54 of 126)
6. Gabe Wiznitzer - 0.051 (58 of 126)
7. Miles Brown - 0.051 (59 of 126)
8. Aidan Hadaway - 0.047 (64 of 126)
9. DeVon Baker - 0.045 (68 of 126)
10. Ben Roderick - 0.041 (75 of 126)
11. AJ Brown - 0.039 (79 of 126)
12. Elmore James IV - 0.029 (90 of 126)

MAC
1. Malique Jacobs (Kent St) - 0.125
2. Olumide Adelodun (Ohio) - 0.123
3. Miryne Thomas (Kent St) - 0.120
4. Amani Lyles (Akron) - 0.114
5. Chris Payton (Kent St) - 0.113
6. Cli'Ron Hornbeak (Kent St) - 0.111
7. Enrique Freeman (Akron) - 0.109
8. Julius Rollins (Kent St) - 0.106
9. Delrecco Gillespie (Kent St) - 0.100
10. Sincere Carry (Kent St) - 0.098

Displayed as Player - Value (Rank in MAC)

OBPM

OHIO
1. Dwight Wilson - 7.0 (3 of 126)
2. AJ Clayton - 2.6 (15 of 126)
3. Miles Brown - 2.2 (19 of 126)
4. AJ Brown - 1.8 (21 of 126)
5. Jaylin Hunter - 1.1 (29 of 126)
6. Ben Roderick - -0.6 (55 of 126)
7. Elmore James IV - -2.0 (73 of 126)
8. Ajay Sheldon - -3.7 (93 of 126)
9. DeVon Baker - -3.8 (95 of 126)
10. Aidan Hadaway - -4.5 (107 of 126)
11. Gabe Wiznitzer - -5.7 (114 of 126)
12. Olumide Adelodun - -6.9 (115 of 126)

MAC
1. Xavier Castaneda (Akron) - 8.1
2. JT Shumate (Toledo) - 8.0
3. Dwight Wilson (Ohio) - 7.0
4. Enrique Freeman (Akron) - 4.9
5. Lamar Norman (W Michigan) - 4.9
6. Mekhi Lairy (Miami) - 4.7
7. Keshawn Williams (N Illinois) - 4.6
8. Curtis Jones (Buffalo) - 4.2
9. Miryne Thomas (Kent St) - 4.1
10. Tray Maddox (W Michigan) - 3.8

Displayed as Player - Value (Rank in MAC)

BPM

OHIO
1. Dwight Wilson - 5.6 (6 of 126)
2. Miles Brown - 3.4 (10 of 126)
3. AJ Clayton - 2.3 (18 of 126)
4. Jaylin Hunter - 1.6 (22 of 126)
5. AJ Brown - 0.7 (31 of 126)
6. Ben Roderick - -0.9 (50 of 126)
7. Ajay Sheldon - -1.7 (62 of 126)
8. DeVon Baker - -3.8 (84 of 126)
9. Elmore James IV - -4.4 (93 of 126)
10. Olumide Adelodun - -5.0 (101 of 126)
11. Gabe Wiznitzer - -6.4 (112 of 126)
12. Aidan Hadaway - -8.1 (117 of 126)

MAC
1. Xavier Castaneda (Akron) - 9.5
2. JT Shumate (Toledo) - 7.7
3. Miryne Thomas (Kent St) - 7.2
4. Enrique Freeman (Akron) - 6.3
5. Demarius Jacobs (Ball St) - 6.0
6. Dwight Wilson (Ohio) - 5.6
7. Malique Jacobs (Kent St) - 5.0
8. Curtis Jones (Buffalo) - 4.9
9. Yazid Powell (Buffalo) - 3.5
10. Miles Brown (Ohio) - 3.4

DEFENSIVE STATS

Defensive Rating
1. Olumide Adelodun - 90.4 (8 of 126)
2. Dwight Wilson - 99.4 (35 of 126)
3. AJ Clayton - 100.6 (42 of 126)
4. Jaylin Hunter - 102.2 (48 of 126)
5. Ajay Sheldon - 103.4 (57 of 126)
6. Miles Brown - 103.6 (59 of 126)
7. Gabe Wiznitzer - 103.6 (60 of 126)
8. Aidan Hadaway - 103.9 (63 of 126)
9. DeVon Baker - 104.8 (68 of 126)
10. Ben Roderick - 105.6 (71 of 126)
11. AJ Brown - 107.4 (80 of 126)
12. Elmore James IV - 108.9 (89 of 126)

DWS/40
1. Olumide Adeldon - 0.123 (2 of 126)
2. Dwight Wilson - 0.072 (28 of 126)
3. AJ Clayton - 0.061 (42 of 126)
4. Jaylin Hunter - 0.057 (49 of 126)
5. Ajay Sheldon - 0.053 (54 of 126)
6. Gabe Wiznitzer - 0.051 (58 of 126)
7. Miles Brown - 0.051 (59 of 126)
8. Aidan Hadaway - 0.047 (64 of 126)
9. DeVon Baker - 0.045 (68 of 126)
10. Ben Roderick - 0.041 (75 of 126)
11. AJ Brown - 0.039 (79 of 126)
12. Elmore James IV - 0.029 (90 of 126)

DBPM
1. Ajay Sheldon - 2.0 (14 of 126)
2. Olumide Adelodun - 1.9 (16 of 126)
3. Miles Brown - 1.3 (23 of 126)
4. Jaylin Hunter - 0.6 (34 of 126)
5. DeVon Baker - 0.0 (47 of 126)
6. AJ Clayton - -0.2 (52 of 126)
7. Ben Roderick - -0.3 (59 of 126)
8. Gabe Wiznitzer - -0.6 (64 of 126)
9. AJ Brown - -1.1 (75 of 126)
10. Dwight Wilson - -1.4 (78 of 126)
11. Elmore James IV - -2.4 (105 of 126)
12. Aidan Hadaway - -3.7 (119 of 126)

Thanks for the deep dive, I have been meaning to dig into the analytics now that we have a decent sample size to look at at this point.

This tells me we have 3 top tier players in the MAC in DW and the Brown Bros. If they are able (namely DW), I would like to see them each get 32+ minutes a game at this point.

Also tells me AJ Clayton is better than a lot of people think, and that EJ should indeed get more minutes than he is getting.

It also makes you scratch your head about why 11 and 22 are getting as many minutes as they are. I said this in a text string with friends a month ago:

It's time for this coaching staff to hitch their wagon to the freshman guards and deal with the mishaps they make when they make them, because they're three of the best players on this roster.


The numbers Graff posted seem to support that for the most part.

How many games can our future 1st round NBA draft pick who spurned Duke for OHIO play in and still maintain his red shirt for this year? In football it’s now four games.

Does Wiz’ number account for DW3 not being on the court? They are never on the court together. Like, what’s everyone’s number when out best player is not playing?

69 (perhaps unintentionally) nailed why individual plus-minus is a low-value statistic. There’s just too much noise. At the NBA level, you can find out things like comparing how well the team does when two teammates are on the floor together and when they’re not. I’m not aware of that level of sophistication publicly available for college. I would not have guessed we would have less access to quality statistics than a decade ago, but aside from Kenpom, which is far from exhaustive, we lost just about all our sources.

As many have already stated, raw plus/minus doesn't exist for NCAA anymore. It's used heavily in the NBA so colleges started looking into it until KenPom obliterated its usefulness by showing the sample sizes are so small (even in 30ish games) that the random noise overwhelms the actual underlying value, which is exactly why statistics that I used like OBPM, DBPM and BPM came into existence.

I also stated up front, no single stat is perfect nor shows the full picture as to a players worth or ability. However, when you start looking at multiple advanced stats together (my summary last post which looks across offense/defense/total) you can really start to see TRENDS in a players actual worth to a team on the season, and their inherent value (or not) on each end of the floor.

I'll have another update to the stats above this weekend after Saturday's round of games.