Intro: Projecting 2017-18 College Hoops
This started innocently and honestly enough. I wanted to see what the Big 12 and Big Ten Conferences looked liked next year. Living in the Midwest, I had an obvious interest.
To start, I went to College Basketball Reference and simply started listing teams and those that will return to their respective team. Just looking at names did me no good, so I wanted to find a way to quantify these returnees. CBR offers a statistic for every single thing, but something like points, rebounds, assists, etc. didn't seem like the way to do it. Too much noise.
As a fan of advanced statistics, I decided to calculate each team's returning win shares. I would equate basketball win shares to WAR in baseball - an all-encompassing statistic that quantifies both the offensive and defensive side of the ball. It's not perfect, but I like it. For a reference point on win shares click here.
After I did this, I quickly realized it wasn't enough. I also needed to find a way to project the incoming win shares -- from high school recruits, JUCOs and eligible transfers. That's when things start to get a little complicated.
To calculate incoming recruits, I looked at the latest freshman class (Lonzo Ball, Josh Jackson, Miles Bridges, etc.) and how many win shares they were worth this past season. I averaged those totals for recruits ranked by Rivals between 1-10, 11-25, 26-50, 51-100 and 101-150. Now, sometimes Rivals misses on recruits, so I ran a query on CBR for ALL freshmen this past year and their win share totals.
As it turns out, there were 897.70 win shares from a total of 1,212 frosh. 233 of those came from the Rivals150. With the remaining 1,062 freshmen and 664.70 win shares, I calculated the average win shares. Here's what I came up with:
Rivals 1-10: 4.5 WIN SHARES
Rivals 11-25: 2.3 WIN SHARES
Rivals 26-50: 1.8 WIN SHARES
Rivals 51-100: 1.2 WIN SHARES
Rivals 101-150: 0.9 WIN SHARES
The Rest: 0.6 WIN SHARES
For the incoming freshmen class I used those numbers to project what they will be worth to their team. It's important to remember these groupings are completely arbitrary, and it's based on just one year. If I had the time and gumption, I could have sunk the groups down even further AND calculated the averages of freshmen dating back 10 or 15 or whatever amount of years. It's also important to remember this was a particularly strong freshmen class. Maybe these averages are high, but I have three kids, a full-time and busy job and a limited amount of time and resources. Also, I'm not Ken Pomeroy.
So, I was comfortable enough to continue on projecting freshmen this way. But what about the junior college players? I decided - except for the case of some of the higher rated JUCOs - to simply give them the 0.6 WS projection that I am giving other freshmen. Again, there are some probable major deficiencies in this, but the goal isn't to nail next year's win total. It was simply to get an idea of what these conferences look like for next season.
I did what I did with the Big 12 and Big Ten Conferences. Then I did the Missouri Valley because I have an interest in that league. Then I did the Summit League because I love that league. Then I just did them all. Yes, I projected all 32 conferences. It took me over a month, as I generally did one league per day.
With all of this done, I wanted to share it with others. I don't know how many will care to read this. Maybe it'll be just one or two or 20, but I like writing, I love college basketball and this was fun. So, I hope you enjoy fun things. Or things that I think are fun, at least.
A few final notes before the fun begins:
-I couldn't have done this without College Basketball Reference, Verbal Commits, KenPom or my trusty iMac and calculator.
-As I was working on this project, transfer after transfer hit the news wire and others decommitted and committed. Sometimes the toughest thing to do was keep up with all this, but I did! I think. And it's not done, so there will be updates for these leagues as I start writing about them. I think this was the most fun part of it all, seeing which teams were improving their standing (Missouri) and those that were falling off (Duke, New Mexico, Memphis). You'll see.
-For transfers that didn't play this year and will be eligible next season, I generally used their last eligible season's win shares for the projection. There were times where I averaged their career win shares with total games played. There are also guys like Sam Cunliffe at Kansas that will be eligible for just one semester and others like Malik Newman that did not play particularly well at Mississippi State before transferring to Kansas. For those special cases, I used my Rivals150 projection - and for Cunliffe I cut that in half. But not always. Feel free to ask questions as these posts roll along. I'll try to remember what the heck I was thinking when I threw a number out there.
-There are also guys that suffered injuries or were ineligible for certain amounts of times. If a player played 10 or more games, I prorated their win shares to their team's total games last year. There are some cases - can't think of the exact one off the top of my head - where a star player got injured very early in the season and didn't play 10. For some I prorated their totals. For others, I used their last full season. It was just a feel sort of thing.
-Lastly, those that have hired an agent and plan to enter the NBA Draft, of course, are not included. Those that have announced their entry but have yet to hire an agent are still included in the scholarship and win shares total.
-Again, I am not contending this is a perfect method. All I really wanted was an idea, and my guess is that there is +/- margin for error of at least five win shares either way. Also, there's a chance I'm wrong on who has a scholarship and who doesn't, so my scholarship totals could also be off. I feel a little better about this since I used the Verbal Commits roster tool -- incredible, by the way. Feel free to correct any errors.
With all that said, I hope you'll enjoy this project as much as I have. Below are links to conferences I've completed:
Big 12 Conference
Big Ten Conference
Big 12 Conference
Big Ten Conference
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