Dave Sez

Assisted Losing

Ken Pomeroy has a new post up where he talks about a new statistic on his site - Assist Rate. Like his other statistics, it takes a common stat and adjusts based on a team's tempo so that you can more accurately compare a team like UNC to a team like Princeton.

The top 100 players for last season ranked by assist rate are here. Take a good look at that list and see what it's (mostly) missing. The ACC was down this year and one of the most common (and accurate) reasons was the paucity of top-notch point guards. Well, according to Ken's table, only one(!!) of the nation's top 100 assist men played in the ACC - Sean Singletary at number 77. And Singletary is hardly known as a pass-first point guard.

Actually, it appears that there are relatively few players from power conferences. One reason for that may be simply that pass-first point guards are rare in today's game, especially at the top levels. Guards at big-time schools think that they will play in the NBA and if you want to play in the NBA you need to be able to score.