With a full slate of games tonight and tomorrow, here’s a brief look at which Ivy players lead the way on the stat sheet through week one:
Ready, Set, Consume!:
The best measure of a player’s involvement in the offense is his individual possession usage, which can either be shown as a percentage of team possessions used while on the floor or number of possessions used per game. The latter will be shown here.
Yale’s Alex Zampier leads the way using over 19 possessions per contest, while Harvard’s Jeremy Lin sits in second with just over 18 and Cornell’s Louis Dale rounds out the top three at just more than 17.
There’s a bit of a gap between numbers three and four, as Penn’s Darren Smith is currently using 13 possessions a game with Brown’s Peter Sullivan slightly behind that number in fifth. Rounding out the top 10, in order, are Princeton’s Pawel Buczak, the Quakers’ Zack Rosen, the Big Red’s Ryan Wittman and Jeff Foote, and Dartmouth’s Jabari Trotter.
We Want The Ball And We’re Gonna Score:
Floor percentage is a measure of the percentage of possessions that a player uses that lead to at least a point.
Removing those players who have failed to use at least five possessions per contest (and thus likely would have highly variable results), the current Ivy leader is Harvard’s Pat Magnarelli who is currently turning 72.6 percent of his possessions into points.
Magnarelli is over 11 percentage points clear of second-place Jordan Gibson of Yale who checks in at 61.5 percent. Gibson is followed by the Tigers’ Zach Finley (58.8 percent) and two more members of the Crimson – Lin (58.4 percent) and Keith Wright (57.8 percent).
The remainder of the top 10 includes Foote, the Bulldogs’ Michael Sands, Princeton’s Ian Hummer, Harvard’s Dee Giger and Brown’s Matt Mullery.
Shoot To Score And Other Ways To Produce Points:
A popular measure of production is Individual Points Produced, which includes elements of the four factors made famous by basketball statistician Dean Oliver. Individual Points Produced rewards players for their share of a made field goal, assist, offensive rebound or free throw to create an all-encompassing measure of total point production attributable to a given player.
The current Ivy leader in points produced is Lin with almost 24 per game. Zampier currently ranks second with 19.5 per contest, followed by Dale with roughly 18 per outing. Foote and Finley round out the top five with just over and just under 14 per game, respectively. The rest of the top 10 (all of whom are within a point of each other with approximately 12-13) are Wittman, Mullery, Harvard’s Oliver McNally, Gibson and Princeton’s Dan Mavraides.
The Player That’s Most Efficient:
Offensive Rating is a measure of the individual’s points produced per 100 possessions used. Since Offensive Rating is highly correlated with (and in some instances comprised of) the above statistics, it should come as no surprise that the top 10 players in the category have all already appeared in the top 10 of one or more of the categories above. Also, keep in mind that these gaudy ratings will surely regress to the mean of roughly 100 rather quickly as more games are played and as the quality of competition begins to balance out.
Magnarelli leads the way with an Offensive Rating of 148, 11 points ahead of Giger’s 137, who sits in second. Gibson comes in right behind at 136, while McNally and Lin follow with 132 and 131, respectively. The remainder of the top 10 includes Wright, Mavraides, Finley, Foote and Mullery.
