BE Recruits - Non Top 100 / non-JUCO

Before we even get started, I wanted to take a few minutes to say thank you to everyone that helped Donate to Al's Run. By the way, check out the GoMarquette.com release for their coverage. They've got a write-up, a photo gallery, and even a nice little video clip. Back to the donations, we set two fairly modest goals, and after a reasonably slow start, the incredible Marquette fans did a fantastic job of surpassing both goals. On behalf of Cracked Sidewalks, we really appreciate it.

Moving on to the content from Cracked Sidewalks (instead of our version of a pledge drive)... Originally, we just set out to try and determine what would be a reasonable set of expectations for our talented but young recruiting class. After all, we as Marquette fans are trying to adjust to life after the Three Amigos. Therefore, we started with our three Top 100 recruits (Cadougan, Williams, and Maymon) and looked at the performance of Top 100 recruits in their first year. Then, in order to determine what would be reasonable for JUCOs Buycks and DJO, we took a took at JUCO players in their first year, as also offered some additional thoughts on JUCOs.

However, after some questions and then the suggestion from BMA, we decided to take a look at any recruit that was either not a Top 100 recruit or a JUCO player. BMA was also kind enough to grab the entire list of players and send that to me, so none of this would have even been possible without that support. Therefore, this post is the third part in our series that looks at how Big East recruits perform in their first year.

We again looked at the range of players in the new expanded Big East (starting in 2005). This covered 127 different players across all sixteen teams. Unfortunately, the news for this set of players was not very good in their first year.

• Sixty-five of this set of players get an "Incomplete" in their first year. In other words, they didn't register enough games, minutes, or possessions to even qualify for an offensive rating on Pomeroy's website. That is over half of all players.
• Of the remaining sixty-two players, their average offensive rating was only 93.9 and their average usage was only 17.1%. That means that, on average, the first year player in this group was a Non-Factor (ORtg < 100; Usage < 20%)
  
• Therefore, and not surprisingly, there were very few recruits in this data set (non-Top 100; non-JUCO) that ended up as Studs in their first year. How few? There were three over the past four years (Dominique Jones, Sharraud Curry, and Darryl "Trucks" Bryant). That's two percent total.
  
• Twelve percent of these players (fifteen total) ended up as serviceable role players, with an Offensive Rating > 100 and a usage under 20%. Some of these players include Andy Rautins, Preston Knowles, Craig Austrie, Arinze Onuaku, and Jonathon Peoples.
• Eight percent (ten total) of these players ended up as Ball Hogs. This includes "Greedy" Peterson, Joe Mazzula, Paul Gause, and Weyinmi Efejuku.
• That means that the remaining 78% of the players in this group were Non-Factors. Yeah... basically four out of five players in this set were non-factors in their first year.
  

But wait... there's more news for low expectations

• Almost a third of all players (32%; forty-one total) in this group ended up transferring away from their original team. This was probably the first thing that BMA and I both noticed, and exactly why it was tracked.
  
• Twelve percent (fifteen total) ended up having to redshirt in their first year
• Nine percent (twelve total) ended up with some sort of DNP/eligibility issue... typically from academics
  

How about the Marquette recruits in this group?

• Matt Mortensen - Incomplete/Non-Factor, Redshirt, Eligibility Issue
• Patrick Hazel - Incomplete/Non-Factor, Eventually Transferred
• Scott Christopherson - Incomplete/Non-Factor, Eventually Transferred
• Chris Otule - Incomplete/Non-Factor
• David Cubillan - quality Role Player in his first year (ORtg 119.3, Usage 12.4)
  

What implications do we see from looking at this group of players?

Clearly, don't expect a lot in the first year from a recruit that doesn't make any Top 100 lists. Honestly, don't be surprised if these types of recruits don't stick around all four years. What I found the most surprising was that it's really only plausible to expect solid contributions from a Top 100 recruit. In their first year, JUCOs and other recruits have almost never been serious contributors on the court.

As we continue to dig into the data, we'll undoubtedly be able to do some more comprehensive analysis on a team level. Stay tuned for that as we get ready for the season.