Kansas Jayhawks Basketball: Stats with David

I’m going to try and start up a weekly column where I take a look at some element of KU basketball from the numerical side. When I get into numbers, I have a tendency to make things complicated and way too long, so my focus for these posts is just to highlight something fairly quick and easy to understand, but something you wouldn’t find by glancing at the statsheet.

This week, I’m analyzing net offensive production. There’s a basic stat out there simply called “points created,” which is a player’s number of points scored, plus the points his teammates have scored directly off his assists. I’ve tinkered with that number a bit to make it a little more meaningful.

First, since minutes played can make a huge difference when looking at amassed production, I looked at this from a “per 40” perspective. So step one was simply looking at each player’s points created per 40 minutes on the court. That number on its own was interesting, but I felt it was lacking an efficiency element. So instead of pure PC/40, I decided to find each player’s net PC/40 by factoring in their turnovers.

This is an imprecise science, but KU is averaging 1.203 points per possession per KenPom. This means that, on average, when a player turns the ball over, he costs the team 1.203 points. I subtracted the points lost by TOs per 40 for each player, to come up with net points created per 40 minutes played. Since that’s a really long name, I retitled it “point value per 40” (or PV40). Here’s what I found:

Now, this isn’t an end all/be all offensive metric. It puts big guys at a disadvantage because by nature, they get fewer assists and will generally turn the ball over at a higher rate. Still, it gives you an idea of what the direct point contribution is for each player while they’re on the floor. The things that jump out at me most are: 1) Wow, Frank Mason, 2) Carlton Bragg’s offensive has been just fine, and 3) though Svi and Vick have seen nearly identical minutes, I think Svi is the more valuable offensive asset.

Thoughts?