Dave Sez

Final Regular Season Prouty Ratings

As I promised yesterday, I calculated the final regular season Prouty ratings for all ACC players. As I expected, the Prouties accurately picked four of the five first-team All-ACC performers. The one exception is Sean Singletary, who comes in 15th in Prouty, but the ratings don't take into account leadership, toughness or offensive burden, other than in the catch-all category of Win Effect (see this explanation of the ratings).

One player I pointed out yesterday as being undervalued by the league's voters was Jared Dudley. Just as I suspected, the Prouties backed me up. Dudley comes in fifth place overall in the league, which makes sense, as his numbers are fairly close to his teammate Craig Smith's.

One aspect of the Prouty ratings that I've said before that I like is also one that I have some problems with. We all know that statistics don't tell the whole story in basketball, so the Prouty ratings include a team's overall success in the formula. The theory is that things like setting good picks, fighting through screens, remembering plays and hustling after loose balls don't always show up in a box score, but they are critical aspects of winning. So, the ratings factor in a team's winning percentage. I think that's great, but I think that the Prouty ratings give this factor too much weight. Win Effect is equal to Points Per Minute, Possessions Per Minute and Offensive Efficiency. While I agree that some stats are missing in there, I don't think the missing stats add up to 25% of the total. Conventional numbers aren't that bad.

To fix this problem, I recalculated the ratings giving Win Effect only 10% of the total. I put these in a column called "Dave" for "Dave Ratings" just because something like "Adjusted Prouty" sounded too boring (and made the column too wide). This change doesn't have a huge overall impact, but it does help guys like Singletary who shine on a team that's not doing well. It also helps to offset the pull that great teams have on average players. For example, Sean Dockery is a good player who's important to Duke's success, but is he really the 12th best player in the league? Far from it. The Dave ratings put him at 35, which is more reasonable (especially when you remember that there are 12 teams in the league now).

Below is a list of the top 50 players in the league, sorted by their Dave Rating. You can see the full stats here.

Rank	Player		Team	Prouty	Dave

1	JJ Redick		Duke	0.589	0.540

2	Shelden Williams	Duke	0.569	0.535

3	Tyler Hansbrough	UNC	0.514	0.500

4	Craig Smith	BC	0.515	0.478

5	Jared Dudley	BC	0.513	0.469

6	Al Thornton	FSU	0.474	0.468

7	Reyshawn Terry	UNC	0.462	0.462

8	Chris McCray	MD	0.422	0.453

9	Cedric Simmons	NCS	0.457	0.449

10	Eric Williams	WF	0.437	0.442

11	David Noel	UNC	0.476	0.442

12	Sean Singletary	UVA	0.434	0.436

13	Alexander Johnson	FSU	0.430	0.433

14	Danny Green	UNC	0.409	0.429

15	Robert Hite	UM	0.427	0.428

16	Nik Caner-Medley	MD	0.441	0.427

17	Engin Atsur	NCS	0.452	0.421

18	Akin Akingbala	CU	0.415	0.414

19	Tyrese Rice	BC	0.414	0.413

20	Ilian Evtimov	NCS	0.431	0.413

21	Josh McRoberts	Duke	0.429	0.412

22	Justin Gray	WF	0.413	0.411

23	Guillermo Diaz	UM	0.418	0.410

24	JR Reynolds	UVA	0.408	0.404

25	Cameron Bennerman	NCS	0.425	0.404

26	Jamon Gordon	VT	0.407	0.404

27	Louis Hinnant	BC	0.439	0.402

28	Trent Strickland	WF	0.402	0.402

29	Ra'Sean Dickey	GT	0.381	0.401

30	Ekene Ibekwe	MD	0.393	0.400

31	Shawan Robinson	CU	0.398	0.397

32	Anthony Morrow	GT	0.385	0.396

33	Sean Marshall	BC	0.421	0.393

34	Zabian Dowdell	VT	0.398	0.391

35	Sean Dockery	Duke	0.440	0.391

36	James Mays	CU	0.348	0.390

37	Vernon Hamilton	CU	0.399	0.388

38	Isaiah Swann	FSU	0.386	0.387

39	Gavin Grant	NCS	0.389	0.387

40	Coleman Collins	VT	0.379	0.386

41	Jeremis Smith	GT	0.369	0.385

42	Andrew Brackman	NCS	0.381	0.384

43	Mike Jones	MD	0.375	0.379

44	Tony Bethel	NCS	0.405	0.378

45	Wes Miller	UNC	0.387	0.377

46	DJ Strawberry	MD	0.393	0.377

47	Andrew Wilson	FSU	0.367	0.374

48	Anthony King	UM	0.371	0.372

49	James Gist	MD	0.366	0.371

50	Bobby Frasor	UNC	0.395	0.367

A few thing that stood out to me:

• Losing Chris McCray really hurt Maryland more than most might have guessed. Actually, that's fairly obvious now, but seeing that McCray still rates as the eighth best player in the league, it makes a lot of sense.


• Justin Gray, as I pointed out yesterday, was way overrated by the voters. I think they gave him credit for his career, or more likely, just looked at his scoring average.


• Danny Green isn't just a nice role player for Carolina - he's very efficiently productive!


• Tyrese Rice should probably be starting for Boston College.


• Cameron Bennerman is overrated, at least relative to his NC State teammates. I suspected this already, and the numbers back it up. Ilian Evtimov and Engin Atsur, his more versatile teammates, count more towards State's success (or lack thereof).


• Reyshawn Terry, at least from a production standpoint, is a better player than David Noel. I know he's not the leader that Noel is, but Terry had a hell of a emergence in the second half of the season, and his numbers reflect that.


• Florida State's Andrew Wilson is not only older than half of the NBA All-Stars, but he's the most efficient scorer in the league (among players who play at least 15 minutes per game. Miami's flashy freshman Denis Clemente is dead last.


• It's no shocker that J.J. Redick leads the league in points per minute (by a huge margin), but I was surprised to see that Sean Singletary is number two. When you factor in Virginia's relatively slow tempo, that's just more evidence to support his first-team honors. Although, to be fair, Justin Gray comes in third, so either I'm too hard on Gray or that stat means less than I think.


• When he wears his mask, Laurynas Mikalauskas is the scariest-looking player in decades. He looks like he wants to eat your children.