Below is a chart comparing four potential national player of the year candidates from Mike Rothstein’s media straw poll. The first two columns are ACC players. The second two are national frontrunners. Any idea who each one is?

A Comparison of Four Player of the Year Candidates (credit: Statsheet.com)

The leftmost column is Mike Scott, who received one — seriously, one — third place vote in the straw poll (along with Julian Mavunga, Arnett Moultrie and Ricardo Ratliffe). The second column is Harrison Barnes, who received one first place vote and one third place vote. The third and fourth columns are Thomas Robinson and Jared Sullinger, respectively. Robinson showcased a commanding lead in the poll with 37 (of 53) first-place votes, seven second-place votes, and five third-place votes. Sullinger finished in third with two first-place votes, 12 second-place votes and 12 third-place votes. If we take the poll at face value, Robinson has dominated college basketball (not an unreasonable statement), Jared Sullinger is doing moderately well and Mike Scott sort of impressed someone — but isn’t playing as well as Barnes.

Luckily, we don’t take straw polls at face value because the truth is far from the votes. Take the above statistics with a slight grain of salt because they don’t include defense at all (Scott, Barnes and Sullingers are all mediocre defenders). But let’s break down the stats one by one.

All four players are averaging between 17 and 18 points a game. This actually shocked me, as Virginia plays a full nine possessions a game fewer than Kansas or Ohio State and 14 less than North Carolina. Those extra possessions should lead to extra scoring form the other players, but Scott holds his own. Taking tempo out of the equation, and Scott’s offensive efficiency is only rivaled by Sullinger. The shooting statistics are basically a breakdown of what makes Scott so effective: He’s a very good foul shooter, gets to the line often (significantly more often than Robinson or Barnes), shoots the deep ball fairly well albeit rarely, and makes a very good percentage of his twos. Again, only Sullinger’s numbers match up well at all offensively. Scott also uses the same percentage of possessions (27.8%) as Robinson, which is more than Sullinger (25.6%) or Barnes (26.4%).

Mike Scott Deserves More National Attention. (credit: The Sabre)

Now look at rebounding. Here Scott lags a little behind Sullinger and Robinson, especially on the defensive end. His numbers are still strong but nowhere in the ballpark of the OSU or KU big men, two of the best defensive rebounders in the country. Finally, Scott’s turnover percentage is on par with Sullinger and Barnes and below Robinson’s. Thus, Scott is on par with Sullinger and ahead of Robinson offensively. It’s true that Scott’s defense lags behind statistically because he’s not a shot blocker. However, I think Virginia’s overall defense speaks for itself.

mpatton (576 Posts)

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2012 at 1:49 pm by mpatton and is filed under acc, microsites. Tagged: harrison barnes, jared sullinger, mike scott, thomas robinson, virginia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.