Last year, we highlighted some of the biggest differences between our player rankings model and those from national sources (link) and about 75% we identified in the article were correct. The most notable being Tyrese Proctor who was getting All American hype. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest differences this year.
Inefficient Guards
You can look down other rankings and find small guards, one after another, barely reaching 50% true shooting—many of them competing against weaker schedules last year, like Ryan Nembhard or Aidan Mahaney—yet still posting poor percentages or performing on low usage. Nembhard, in particular, did most of his damage against the easier WCC conferences only portion, yet some, like Sports Illustrated, project him as an All-American.
Many others, had small usage roles, like Tyrese Proctor , or struggled with sub-.490 true shooting, like Elliot Cadeau. In my opinion, it’s difficult to justify ranking such inefficient players.
There are plenty of other guards with better statistical profiles against tougher schedules (SOS), playing on teams with less talent where the defensive pressure on them as high-usage players is much greater. I’d argue that these roles are much harder to be efficient in. As a guard, their defensive impact within a team structure is also much less significant, so it’s hard to blame them for the majority what happens behind on defense or for the surrounding talent. It’s a team game and they can only control their part of it.
Here are a few examples. (CBS didn’t have any in their top 100)
A player much lower on my list Javian McCollum I believe is a comparable talent, and if placed on Gonzaga would like be able to produce at least 90% of what Nembhard did for example. If anything, there’s far less pressure on a team as loaded as Gonzaga, with many easy assist opportunities with talent all around you, and a strong defense behind them, to play that low-usage, game-manager role.
The statistical profile of someone like Nembhard isn’t even comparable to a player like Dre Davis beyond just the advanced stats I posted. It’s baffling how the narrative surrounds some of these players with little tangible individual statistical success on the court.
Comparison to Bigs
These players provide incredible value and are ranked in major conferences or nationally in key analytics like PER, True Shooting, Offensive and Defensive Ratings/Net Differential, BPM, and more. They are per-minute elites, often overlooked, some even with impressive counting stats. You can’t argue against their efficiency—they make a higher percentage of baskets, and in most cases, it’s not even close. For many of them, it’s simply a matter of how many minutes they play. Even in less minutes they usually provide more value as well.
A player shooting 70% against a top-25 defensive SOS at Virginia Tech is ranked outside the top 176+, while a game manager like Ryan Nembhard is ranked as high as 18? I completely disagree with that value assessment and the comparison of what each player provides. If you put a player like Kidd against the 100th defensive SOS on Gonzaga, he would dominate as well—there’s little doubt. I’m not sure Nembhard would have performed as well as Sean Pedulla did in a similar role at Virginia Tech. These are just a few examples I see in the rankings that make little statistical sense to me or how you arrive that he is a top 20 player where as Pedulla didn’t make the top 175 of the same outlet that had Nembhard #18.
Final Comparison
Which one actually looks like a Top 35 Player in value? I know where I fall.
Even if you dismiss the obvious greater value of big men on both ends and doing things like averaging 13.2ppg on .700% true shooting like Lynn Kidd, there are still many proven guards with better statistics than some of those chosen by groupthink, in my opinion.
