Projecting the 2010 Draft Class: The Senior Prospects Metric

It can't be stopped. It can't be reasoned with. It barges into serious discussion like a drunk barging into a church picnic. The new 2010 Senior Prospects Metric (SPM) calculations are ready for the 2010 WNBA Draft!

The point of the SPM is to project future WNBA performance based on a player's junior year in college. Granted, a lot can happen between August 2009 and June 2010, but with that in mind, the SPM suggests players to keep your eyes on during the offseason.

Without going into the gory details, here's how the numbers are calcuated.

* The SPM is strongly based on a player's rebounding, shot blocking and stealing.
* Players who can shoot the 3-pointer get credit in the SPM. A guard might not be able to block shots, but she can (or should) be able to shoot the 3-pointer.
* An efficiency rating is created based on adjusted Wins Score per minute.
* The SPM doesn't like players who turn over the ball. The metric is subtractive instead of the traditional assist/turnover ratio.
* Players are penalized if they are older than the average player. Those players are probably better because they're further along in their physical development.
* The SPM loves players who can get 50 steals and 50 blocks in a season. Out of the 127 players studied, only two made that cut - Jessica Breland of North Carolina and Vivian Frieson of Gonzaga.
* The relative strength of a player's conference is taken into account.
* The SPM doesn't like players that are too short. Usually, those players get eaten alive in the WNBA.
* The SPM looks with a jaundiced eye at any player who is 6'6" or more. Generally, those players don't turn out to be that great.
* In addition to 3-point accuracy, guards should make a mininum number of 3-pointers.
* A player should rebound well for her position.
* The SPM gives bonuses to high-usage players - players that eat up a lot of their team's possessions - clearly, those players are generating a lot of their team's offense and beyond a certain point, it impacts their offensive efficiency because opposing teams are keying those defenses on those players. Likewise, low usage players are penalized.
* The Brittany Pittman Rule. This is an option rule, and stats will be presented with and without the rule. Brittany Pittman has the highest rank in the SPM, but she's a little known player from Morehead State. The rule: "Any player who is not from a major conference - the ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 10 or SEC - will have their score docked by half." In general, players from "mid-major" conferences are ignored at the WNBA Draft.

We take all of these stats from these 127 players and throw them into a blender. Everyone gets assigned a number by the SPM which indicates - or rather, should indicate - their potential.

First, let's look at the rankings without the Brittany Pittman Rule. (We expect Brittany Pittman to rise to the top.)





And now, we look at the stats with the Brittany Pittman Rule in effect.





So it seems that according to the SPM, neither Jayne Appel nor Tina Charles is the best player around even if we apply the Brittany Pittman Rule. That honor goes to Jessica Breland, a forward out of North Carolina. Appel comes in third behind Danielle Wilson, a center out of Baylor. Epipphany Prince, who will skip her senior year of college finishes eighth.

Tina Charles ends up in 12th place. Why? Not as many steals or blocked shots per game as some of the other contenders. She's a good player, and the SPM is just a number.

Some odd names appearing in the top 20: Brittany Pittman of Morehead State still stays in the Top 10 even after being docked for playing in the Ohio Valley Conference. Courtnay Pilypaitis of Vermont should be worth a look. There are other players from non-major conferences in the top 20 as well.

Which leads me to another conclusion. The 2010 Draft will not be as strong as drafts of the previous years. Comparing my values to the values of the 2008 class and the 2009 class, the values drop more quickly. There just aren't that many impact players coming out of the 2010 Draft.

This is good news for teams that do well in the 2009 season, and bad news for the lottery finishers. It is less likely that the acquisition of one player is going to turn a team around. There is no Candace Parker-like figure in this draft, or even an Angel McCoughtry-like figure. In any case, the 2009-10 off season will be interesting to watch. A lot of players are clumped together...so which ones will break out of the pack?

Update: pilight's comment forced me to look up some information about Jessica Breland. As it turns out, she has Hodgkin's lymphoma and will be undergoing chemotherapy and will probably miss the 2009-10 season. However, Hodgkin's lymphoma is one of the most curable forms of cancer.

The Best College Player You Never Heard Of?

The one in blue, not the one in red.

I've been working on my new Senior Prospects Metric (SPM), which is basically a convoluted math formula designed to put a value on a senior prospect for the WNBA draft. The point is to take someone's junior year college statistics and project what kind of a player they'll be.

In 2008, it was Candace Parker who got the highest value from the SPM. In 2009, it was Courtney Paris. (Angel McCoughtry was #5.) In 2010 it's...

...Brittany Pittman of Morehead State? Who the hell is that?

Morehead State University is a school located in Morehead, KY. It plays in the Ohio Valley Conference, one of the weakest conferences around.

Right now, the web site for the Eagles is in transition - a sign of moving up? The roster website doesn't work on all browsers - it wasn't functional but work. So let's talk a little about Brittany Pittman:

* She shoots .496 from the field. Okay. But there are lots of players who shoot better.
* She averages 11.9 points a game. Okay.
* She has a nice rebounding rate of 292 rebounds over 29 games, with 111 of those being offensive rebounds. She's probably a forward or center, then.
* She has 41 steals. That's great for a forward or a center. Having 50 blocks and 50 steals in a season is usually a sure-fire sign of NBA success; it might be the same for the WNBA.
* She has 164 blocked shots.

What? What was that number again? 164 blocked shots? It turns out that Pittman leads the country in blocked shots. And she's only a 6'3" center. Egad. Either the competition is very weak indeed in OVC, or Pittman has something going for her.

Look at her blocks per game over the 2008-09 season. You'd think we were reading about Britney Griner instead of Brittany Pittman.

So what do we know about Brittany Pittman? She played at Middle Tennessee State briefly, sat out a year, and then started up at Morehead State. We do know that she was born in December 1986, which makes her a full year older and then some from most of the 2010 WNBA Draft Prospects, so her stats reflect those of a more mature player. However, the SPM accounts for age and even with the formula docking points for age, Pittman still comes out on top of the #2 player, Jessica Breland of North Carolina.

Her old bio is still up at MTSU. Her high school accomplishments, although nice, don't imply that she was ever all-anything. "Voted All-Region three times...Played on the Kentucky All-Stars in 2005...five year letter winner at Tates Creek High School...." Nothing like "#1 Prospect on Scout.com" or "Parade All-American".

According to Morehead State's own newspaper, she doesn't even get credit from her own coach. "In a recent interview, other than a brief acknowledgment of Pittman's skill for blocking shots, (Coach Mike) Bradbury negated everything she has done." (Although in another article her coach says very good things about her.)

So why is the SPM so high on Brittany Pittman?

The SPM believes that there are three skills you should have: the ability to block shots, to rebound, and to steal the ball. For those most part, those are defensive skills. If the SPM were a person, she would probably say, "Pet, I don't think you can teach defense. All of those factors take the ball out of the enemy's hands and put the ball in your team's hands."

Okay, so she can block. So could Marlies Gipson. Yeah, true that, but the SPM put Marlies Gipson at #39, which is pretty close to where she was drafted - i.e., she wasn't drafted at all. The SPM says Pittman has more dimensions than Gipson.

Obviously, the SPM only looks at stats, and not the player. Someone with real knowledge can take a look at Pittman in person and see if she's any good or not. But this begs the question: "How weak is the Ohio Valley Conference?"

One argument against Pittman's high score could be that she fattened that block record against chumps, the same way Mickey in Rocky III blew up Balboa's record by having him fight nobodies. (Then he met Clubber Lang.) The only name opponent that Morehead State played in the 2008-09 season was Louisville, then ranked #13. Like Clubber Lang in Rocky III, Louisville administed a 66-38 beatdown of the Eagles.

She still blocked eight shots, though. And she had seven rebounds. However, she was held to 1-for-4 shooting in 24 minutes of play, scoring two points. (Angel McCoughtry, however, scored 17 points and 12 rebounds.)

But can you really blame that loss on Brittany Pittman, goes the counter-argument? Chynna Bozeman went 1-for-14 in shooting, and that could have been what killed Morehead State. Tiffanie Stephens went 1-for-9 off the bench. For all we know, Louisville's entire strategy might have been "make sure Pittman doesn't have a good game". The problem wasn't that Brittany Pittman wasn't shooting, the problem was that her supporting cast is terrible compared to that of a Big East contender. Part of the problem of being a great player on a team from a weak conference is that by defintion the people around you aren't contenders, and this is why your team either never goes to the post season or loses to the Connecticuts and Stanfords of the world in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

If you look at the 2009 WNBA Draft, there is a real prejudice towards the major conferences: The Big East, Big 10 and Pac 10, ACC, SEC and Big 12. There were 39 positions in the 2009 WNBA draft.

First round: 12 of 13 players from major conferences.
Second round: 10 of 13 players from major conferences. Two foreign players.
Third round: 9 of 13 players from major conferences. One foreign player.

In short, of the 36 players from the United States, 31 of those were from BCS conferences. The ones that weren't.

Quanitra Hollingsworth (Virginia Commonwealth): 1st round - playing for Minnesota
Megan Frazee (Liberty): 2nd round - playing for San Antonio
Josephine Owino (Union): 3rd round - cut
Jessica Adair (George Washington): 3rd round - cut
Britney Jordan (Texas A&M Commerce): 3rd round - cut

Verily, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a player from the mid-majors (or lower) to get a look in the WNBA. I'm wondering if I should use the SPM to dock several points from a player for not belonging to a BCS conference. However, I feel that that would be unjust - the metric shouldn't reflect prejudices of WNBA GMs.

And this is what pisses me off the most about the case of Brittany Pittman. It's not that she might not be good enough to be in the WNBA - hell, there are lots of players who, if a trained eye takes a look, just clearly don't have what it takes. What pisses me off is the thought that people will assume she's bad automatically because she's from a small school and not bother to look at all. The WNBA can't afford to overlook talent, even if it might possibly come from Morehead State University, a school with all of 9,000 students.

P. S.: I hope to have the complete values of the SPM out by tomorrow.

Shalee Lehning vs. Everybody

Q over at Rethinking Basketball writes a long post about Atlanta Dream rookie starting point guard Shalee Lehning.

She had her detractors when she came out of college.

She was dismissed as irrelevant after the WNBA draft given the 11 player rosters this year.

She was dismissed after making the Atlanta Dream over incumbent point guard Ivory Latta.

I ignored her when I wrote about the WNBA's talented group of rookie point guards earlier this year.

She was dismissed as nothing more than a “ra-ra” player after becoming an important part of the Dream’s rotation.

And now she’s still dismissed after transitioning into a more substantive full-time starter on a potential playoff team. She is not even included among WNBA.com’s top 10 rookies despite starting 8 games for her team, tied for the most of any rookie.

During the Dream’s four game winning streak from July 22- August 1st, Lehning had 17 assists and 2 turnovers.

It's a very good article. And I'll say in my defense that even though I've knocked the rookie around a bit on the blog, the Senior Prospects Metric had her ranked #6 among WNBA prospects.

P. S.: I'm working on the next version of the SPM. So who's best, Tina Charles or Jayne Appel?

Rookie Evaluation and Courtney Paris

Last year, I created something called the Senior Prospects Metric. The Metric was a stab-in-the-dark attempt to predict WNBA performance from one's senior college statistics and from other data. The SPM returned Courtney Paris as the big name in the draft, and I even advocated that she be drafted in the #1 spot by the Atlanta Dream.

However, Courtney is in trouble...again. In a recent news article by Jenni Carlson at The Oklahoman, Courtney made the following quote:

"I can’t honestly say I was familiar with a lot of the players and what they do,” she said. "In the summers, I was doing stuff, so it’s not like I paid attention as much to the WNBA.

"I’m learning more about the game I play every day.”

This has caused a lot of consternation on WNBA message boards, to say the least. However, Carlson also relates the following:

Paris is averaging only 8.1 minutes a game, the third-lowest average among rookies who were drafted in the first round.

Shavonte Zellous is averaging 25.2 minutes a game, most by any rookie. DeWanna Bonner (20.6), Renee Montgomery (17.9) and Angel McCoughtry (16.5) also average twice as much playing time as Paris.

Quentin McCall over at Rethinking Basketball wrote about the problem of evaluating rookie performance. I took away two pieces of information. First, there really isn't a satisfactory way to evaluate rookies, primarily because they never get enough minutes to play. Second - and more importantly in my opinion - you should evaluate rookies by what they do, not by what you think they might do.

There is a metric called the Diamond Rating. The Diamond Rating can be based on any metric you want - Wins Score, Adjusted Wins Score, PER, whatever. The idea is to look at what they've done, blow it up to starters minutes and compare that to average across the league.

So if you think about it, Shavonte Zellous comes up with an argument for winning Rookie of the Year. After all, the metric doesn't consider people who play more than 21 minutes a game - those players are considered to be starters, more or less. And since Zellous plays starter's minutes...well, how many rookies get to start in the WNBA? So there.

Of course, she's starting for one of the worst teams in the league.

Without pulling a bunch of numbers out of a spreadsheet, here's how Diamond Rating evaulates the first round draft picks of 2009 based on Diamond Rating, the Diamond Rating using Adjusted Wins Score:

Bonner
McCoughtry
Wisdom-Hylton
Coleman
Hollingsworth
Toliver
Montgomery
January
Paris
Black
Zellous (if her rating counted)
Walker
Vaughn

If I presented that as a list of "best to worst rookies", that list might not get a lot of argument in some quarters. I'm sure some people would move Coleman and Toliver up the list and Wisdom-Hylton and Hollingsworth down. What's surprising is that Paris ranks so low: 9th out of 13, when many expected her to place a lot higher (including me). What's even more surprising is that Shalee Lehning - a late second rounder - finishes ahead of Paris (!) and two places below Montgomery.

The question, then, is...what happened? Why wasn't Courtney's performance in college a good indicator of her WNBA performance?

The first is that statistics can't tell you everything, obviously. A rule in analysis is, "the more you condense a stat line down to a single number, the less accurate it is likely to be". If you look at Paris's rebounds and ignore everything else, you're likely to be led astray. And if your metric gives undue weight to one statistic, you'll still be led astray. Statistics should illuminate, but should be combined with observation.

One quote might give up some truth:

The Monarchs told Paris after they drafted her that they didn’t need her to be a star immediately, that she could learn their system and condition her body, that she could spend some time being a role player.

Even the Monarchs were worried about Courtney Paris's condition, enough to tell her that they were not satisfied where she was in conditioning when she was drafted. The big knock on Paris was that she was a heavy girl, and when she moved to the WNBA - when things went a lot faster - she'd be left in the dust. I felt that a lot of people were discounting her game in the same way that someone would look at Babe Ruth and say, "that fat tub of lard can probably barely get the bat around his waist".

Furthermore, the quote about not paying attention to the WNBA was also telling. Courtney was "doing stuff" and didn't pay attention "as much" to the WNBA. Courtney is essentially admitting that she should have been better prepared. I'm sure she could have recognized Lauren Jackson or Diana Taurasi, and I doubt those who imply that she was completely ignorant.

However, there are some things that you can either learn from observation or be told. For example, Lauren Jackson. When you're playing a low post offense, does Jackson guard you from the front (blocking your access to the ball with her height), from the side (sort of half-turned and arms out trying to intercept the ball) or from the back (ready to dig her elbows into you when you get the pass and take you off balance)? If you have to pivot to the basket against Jackson, which side should you turn? Right or left? Where is Jackson faster?

If you have to box out against Jackson, will Jackson lock your elbows like Plenette Pierson, and if so, how hard? What is Jackson's best finishing move to the basket? Does she like to bank the shot against the glass or hit a mini jumper? And how much does she know about your tendencies?

In short, if you don't know how good Jackson is either by observation or by being told, and you don't know what her tendencies are, your first WNBA game is a hard tutorial.

It looks like Courtney was neither physically prepared nor mentally prepared for the W. Remember her quote where she promised that she'd pay back her scholarship to the Sooners if Oklahoma didn't win it all in 2009? It conveys thoughtlessness, that one is only thinking at the surface level.

That might change as Courtney gets older...but what if it doesn't? People have long memories. People still wonder if Angel McCoughtry is a head case after her initial clashes with her Louisville coach. People still question Chamique Holdsclaw's commitment. The last reputation Courtney wants is "not prepared". (One step towards Courtney's preparation: giving vague answers and not doing any more articles, to avoid "foot in mouth" disease.)

Hey, every first round draft pick has their own story. Besides, give Courtney time. She's only played about 10 or so games. Her game is still better than the game of four of the first round draft picks. We really won't know Courtney until about two or three years pass. Hopefully, she'll still be in the league.

More Potential College Prospects and the Senior Prospects Metric

Mighty, or midget, or both?

The author of the Chasing the Title blog - even though his real name isn't that much of a secret I don't feel I have permission to state it yet - has boldly gone where only a few of us out there are going, namely, trying to say "these are the players you should be watching this year".

It's tough, because it opens you up to ridicule. Trust me, I know.

As far as I know, there are only three people doing this kind of stats-based analysis: me, the Chasing the Title author, and bullsky who is the author of WNBA Draft Net. Our lists of players look pretty much the same; the only difference is in what order should players be placed?

However, there are time when our lists don't match. I see a player at the Chasing the Title blog who isn't even on my list at all! There were three such players named. That means that I go back to my little spreadsheet, put the stats in, and see how they compare.

Here are three players on the Chasing the Title blog that weren't in my spreadsheet. But they are now. Let's look at how my metrics rate them.

Jenna Green, center, UC Santa Barbara

Well, there's a simple reason Jenna Green didn't make it to my list: she's returning not from her first, but her second medical redshirt year. Which means that we'll be comparing her against a class of people who are actually two years younger than her. Green is two years closer to her peak value, which automatically drops her a lot in my spreadsheet's evaluation.

On the other hand, in her rates of blocks and steals, Green is actually quite good. Furthermore, in terms of efficiency, she does well in producing value per minutes played.

In terms of assists vs. turnovers, she suffers - but all players except guards suffer, so she's in good company. The strength of her conference - the Big West - causes her rating to take a hit because she performs against a lesser class of players.

In her "rebounds expected per 100 rebounds a game for both teams total", however, Green suffers. She doesn't rebound as efficiently as a lot of centers - some of those centers are from schools in conferences as relatively weak at the Big West. My spreadsheet looks at her rebound rate, concludes "this is truly sub-par rebounding for a center", and assigns her a big hit against.

In the end, Green doesn't even make the Top 100 of my spreadsheet - the two medical redshirt years hurt her even more than her rebounding. If you decide to treat her as players aged two years younger, however, she'd jump to the 50s on my list.

Laura Kurz, shooting forward, Villanova

I never liked the term "small forward". There's nothing small about most of those ladies. For Laura Kurz, we might make a relative exception.

Kurz is another person who is missing a year - she sat out a year after transferring to Duke. Kurtz, however, is young enough to compare favorably with her "cohort", so to speak.

In terms of blocking-stealing-rebounding, her rates per game are frankly not impressive enough to stand out overall. She has too many turnovers for her assists - she had 32 assists compared to 71 turnovers in 2007-08.

However, Kurz is small compared to other forwards at 6'1" tall - she'd be at best a Jennifer Lacy type of forward, with Lacy's D-class output. Could Laura Kurz rally grapple against a Ruth Riley-Ann Wauters combo guarding the basket, much less a Candace Parker-Lisa Leslie tandem?

It doesn't look good for Kurz, and I have her at #99 on my list.

Brianne O'Rourke, point guard, Penn State

In O'Rourke's case, some things hurt her and some things help her. She doesn't have very many blocked shots - even for a guard - but Kristi Toliver doesn't have blocked shots either, and Toliver is #3 on my list.

Furthermore, O'Rourke handles the ball well if you compare assists to turnovers. So where does she take her hits?

She actually takes a double hit because of one factor - Brianne O'Rourke is five feet six inches tall. Just like my spreadsheet doesn't trust anyone over 6'6" - the "Katie Feenstra clause" - it turns up its nose at particularly small players. The spreadsheet basically says, "okay, here's a penalty, now prove that you're good". Good players will overcome the penalty; poorer players won't.

Because of her height, it's harder to get rebounds - not impossible if you like to fight, but harder. In "rebounds expected per 100 rebounds a game for both teams total", O'Rourke falls below the acceptable minimum. When O'Rourke players for you, you don't have five players scrapping for rebounds, you might have - as Queenie might say - "four rebounders and one midget". Rebounding is a skill that O'Rourke can't bring to the table. It impairs the team and has to be made up for elsewhere.

This puts O'Rourke in the 50s in my spreadsheet. If she has a good senior year - and I mean a really good one - she might approach WNBA draft territory. But if her senior year is like her junior year, odds are she won't be drafted.

Making Use of Usage

Usage is defined as the percentage of a team's possessions that an individual player uses. Basically, it approximates the "space" a player takes up in the team's offence.

If a team only had five players that were exact clones of each other, each would have the exact same usage rate: 20 percent. The stat is estimated by:

usage = 40 x (field goal attempts + (0.44 x free throw attempts) + (0.33 x assists) + turnovers) x (team pace / league pace) / minutes played

Unfortunately, calculating usage requires two other stats - team pace and league pace. The problem with calculating college usage is determining what "league" pace is. I've decided that when I use usage in evaluating college players, I'll ignore the "team pace / league place" part - in short, by assuming that team pace/league pace = 1.00. This introduces an error in a statistic which is essentially an estimation, but as long as the rules are laid out ahead of time, we'll go forward.

According to Ken Pomeroy at Basketball Prospectus, it seems to be an iron law that usage doesn't change much over time. If a player is a role player in college, she'll be a role player in the WNBA.

Furthermore, there's another rule about usage, this one formulated by Dean Oliver. Players who have high usage rates - somewhat over 25 percent - are performing under their maximum efficiency. It makes sense, as they have to carry more of a team's offense. You're not seeing the player at their best.

On the other hand, players with low usage rates - 15 percent or less - are already performing at their peak. If their usage goes above at what they're used to doing, they'll perform less well. Low usage players are performing at better than their maximum efficiency.

The end result is that players with high usage should be rewarded, and players with low usage should be penalized. I went to my Senior Prospects Metric and decided to reward any player with a usage above 25 percent, and to penalize players with usage below 15.

Players with Usage Greater than 25 Percent

Angel McCoughtry, Louisville - 32.69 percent
Robyn Fairbanks, Utah Valley State - 31.35 percent
Krystal Ellis, Marquette - 29.01 percent
Sade Logan, Robert Morris - 28.27 percent
Kendra Appling, Tennessee State - 27.16 percent
Shavonte Zellous, Pittsburgh - 26.36 percent
Megan Frazee, Liberty - 26.28 percent
Kristi Little, Duquesne - 25.86 percent
Obiageli Okafor, Tennessee State - 25.79 percent
Shantia Grace, South Florida - 25.21 percent
Erin Kerner, Quinnipiac - 25.20 percent

That doesn't mean any of the above players are going to be great WNBA players. Which players had the same unadjusted-for-pace average of the 2008 Draft Class? Valeriya Berezhynska with 30.76 percent and Jolene Anderson of Wisconsin with 30.55 percent. (Candace Parker had a respectable 28.60 percent at Tennessee.)

Adding in usage to the SPM moves Angel McCoughtry up from #8 to #5 on my list. And here's my newest Top 25: