FanPost

Projecting Vander Blue 2013



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Ken Pomeory has a wonderful feature on his website where he compares players statistically to other players. Most of the “similar” players have the same class. For instance Vander’s freshman year, he is most comparable to Ole Miss/ Seton Hall player Eniel Polynice’s freshman season. I took all of the players that I was able to (some could not, for instance Vander’s 2012 season is very similar to SLU guard Jordair Jett’s 2012 season) and projected what they did their junior year. For the players most similar to Vander’s freshman year I looked at stats 2 years out. For his sophomore year, I looked at stats 1 year out. So I used Eniel Polynice’s junior year and Clemson’s Tanner Smith (most comparable sophomore year) junior year as well as other players to project Vander’s junior year. I used a weighted average and weighted the freshmen players half as much as the sophomore players. This is very crude. Most players do not have similar comparable players for consecutive years, probably because college basketball is very dynamic. Players and coaches change every season. I still thought it was fun and a way to get through the off-season to see what players project as.

Vander Blue 2012- 2013 Projection (2011-2012 in parentheses)

Minutes per Game- 28.9 (25.7)

Field Goal Percentage- 42.2% (41.3%)

Three Point Percentage- 31% (25.8%)

Free Throw Percentage- 72.4% (70.8%)

Points per Game- 10.21 (8.4)

Rebounds per Game- 3.8 (4.5)

Assists per Game- 3.2 (2.6)

Blocks per Game- 0.3 (0.2)

Steals per Game- 1.3 (1.1)

Turnovers per Game- 2.11 (2.2)

A modest uptick overall. One could say that if you increase his minutes to 29 that he would have averaged 9.45 points per game, so he might increase his scoring average overall.

Close Marquette Players to The Above Line

2007 Lazar Hayward 6.6 points and 3.6 rebounds per game, 16.3 minutes

2007 Wes Matthews 12.6 points and 5.3 rebounds per game, 31.2 minutes

Vander’s hypothetical line for 2012-2013 would look greater if he was going to be a sophomore. One of his 2011-2012 comparables for his sophomore season was Wes Matthew’s sophomore season. Other comparables include Justin Dentmon (currently on the San Antonio Spurs) and Tory Jackson who was in training camp with the Bucks after graduating. The NBA potential is still there.

Close 2011-2012 Big East Player

Rutgers Guard Myles Mack (freshman)- 9.8 points, 2 rebounds, 2.1 assists per game (26.6 minutes)

I tried to find a player that was similar in the Big East and I think this is a decent comp.

Next up: Davante Gardner

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