Gardner now ranked 58th best offensive player; Cotton 7th

Davante Gardner's recent dominant play has moved him up to No. 58 of roughly 4000 college players in the new Offensive Value Add ratings. Gardner's 4.38 indicates he adds about that many points to Marquette's score over what a good replacement would do, though his defense gives the opponent an extra 0.39 points to give him an overall Value Add rating of 3.99 to make Gardner the 123rd best player overall.

Of the 350 other teams in the country, only 39 have an offensive player better than Gardner, and only 83 have a better overall player according to Value Add. However, one of those teams is Thursday's opponent Providence which features Bryce Cotton (7th best offensive player, 61st overall) and LaDontae Henton (80th overall).

This will be the fourth time this season Marquette has faced a team with more than one top 100 player (Wisconsin, Creighton and New Mexico). Doug McDermott is the greatest offensive player in the history of Value Add, as he is the third best offensive player for the third consecutive season. No other player has ever been in the top 5 even two seasons. However, the best overall opponent this season has been Wisconsin center Frank Kaminsky, who Marquette got into foul trouble to hold to 11 points and 4 rebounds while Chris Otule and Gardner combined for 27 points and 12 rebounds to almost pull a huge road upset.

The following are the rankings for all Marquette players and their opponents. Note that Marquette's redshirt freshman Luke Fischer, the 6'11' transfer from Indiana, is ranked based just on the 16% of Indiana's minutes he has played in this year due to leaving for Milwaukee. If he had started the whole season and played 64% of Indiana's minutes, he would rank as the 581st best offensive player and 685th overall. In his limited action, he hit 56% of his shots and blocked 8.5% of opponents' shots while he was on the floor - and even higher rate than Otule who ranks 99th in the country.

OffRnk	OverRnk	Player	Team	Ht	Yr	OffValue	ValueAdd
14	11	Frank Kaminsky	Wisconsin	7' 0	Jr	5.64	6.82
3	16	Doug McDermott	Creighton	6' 8"	Sr	7.01	6.64
6	25	Kendall Williams	New Mexico	6' 4"	Sr	6.20	6.01
18	42	D'Vauntes Smith-Rivera	Georgetown	6' 3"	So	5.40	5.54
16	48	Cameron Bairstow	New Mexico	6' 9"	Sr	5.62	5.28
	49	Ben Brust	Wisconsin	6' 1"	Sr	5.05	5.27
	53	Jordan Bachynski	Arizona St.	8' 2"	Sr	2.80	5.20
7	61	Bryce Cotton	Providence	6' 1"	Sr	6.13	5.04
	70	Sam Dekker	Wisconsin	6' 7"	So	4.33	4.87
	73	Aaron Craft	Ohio St.	6' 2"	Sr	1.40	4.77
	80	LaDontae Henton	Providence	6' 6"	Jr	3.61	4.65
	89	Jahenns Manigat	Creighton	6' 1"	Sr	4.40	4.54
58	123	Davante Gardner	Marquette	6' 8"	Sr	4.38	3.99
747	588	Todd Mayo	Marquette	6' 3"	Jr	1.34	1.56
1671	665	Juan Anderson	Marquette	6' 6"	Jr	0.12	1.37
1649	689	Deonte Burton	Marquette	6' 4"	Fr	0.14	1.31
1101	848	Jamil Wilson	Marquette	6' 7"	Sr	0.72	1.01
1290	1122	Chris Otule	Marquette	6' 11"	Sr	0.49	0.63
828	1166	Jake Thomas	Marquette	6' 3"	Sr	1.18	0.59
1050	1179	JaJuan Johnson	Marquette	6' 5"	Fr	0.79	0.58
1345	1483	Luke Fischer	Indiana	6' 11"	Fr	0.42	0.33
2018	1714	Steve Taylor	Marquette	6' 7"	So	0.00	0.18
2082	1965	Derrick Wilson	Marquette	6' 1"	Jr	0.00	0.07
	NR	Duane Wilson	Marquette	6' 2"	Fr	0.00	0.00
	NR	Dylan Flood	Marquette	6' 4"	Jr	0.00	0.00