Sports and Numbers - Historical Player Ratings: Kansas Basketball 2003-04

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Historical Player Ratings: Kansas Basketball 2003-04

Aug 30, 2007

In this series of articles, I'm going to rate the players from KU teams of this decade. I'll try to provide some context for the ratings. A couple of important caveats to this kind of analysis: 1) I'm using season-ending boxscores, which means that the ratings don't account for how well a player performed against specific opponents, and 2) There is really no way of knowing whether a team with a power rating of 90 one season is the same as one rated 90 in another, although from top to bottom in college basketball, there probability isn't huge variability in team strength averages from season to season.

Kansas Jayhawks Men's Basketball 2003-04

Overall Record: 24-9
Conference Record: 12-4 (tie 2nd)
Conference Tournament: 1-1 (Semifinalist)
NCAA Tournament: 3-1 (Elite 8)
Final Sagarin Predictor Rating: 88.78 (#12)

Season Totals

(sorted by total minutes played)

NAME	GMS	MIN	FGM	FGA	FTM	FTA	3PM	3PA	PTS	OFF	DEF	TOT	AST	TO	STL	BLK	PF
Aaron Miles	33	1117	100	249	72	103	28	84	300	17	108	125	242	89	63	3	55
Keith Langford	33	1046	184	384	105	158	38	106	511	66	98	164	114	79	35	19	76
Wayne Simien	32	1045	200	376	167	206	2	11	569	98	199	297	39	71	28	30	90
JR Giddens	33	854	141	297	18	27	74	182	374	19	100	119	28	37	24	20	69
David Padgett	31	593	85	160	32	47	0	0	202	51	88	139	33	50	11	43	103
Jeff Graves	31	562	74	119	51	81	0	0	199	44	109	153	28	61	14	20	103
Michael Lee	24	445	39	104	32	40	23	65	133	10	50	60	38	24	14	2	39
Jeff Hawkins	31	277	18	66	8	13	10	51	54	4	15	19	20	17	12	4	30
Christian Moody	25	175	15	22	5	15	0	0	35	12	14	26	4	9	4	6	42
Bryant Nash	30	148	9	35	12	17	0	7	30	17	21	38	7	15	4	10	18
Moulaye Niang	27	128	5	22	14	20	0	0	24	13	17	30	3	5	7	6	17
Jeremy Case	21	82	9	36	2	3	6	26	26	2	8	10	8	11	8	0	6
Omar Wilkes	21	73	10	26	6	12	4	13	30	10	9	19	2	6	4	0	4
Nick Bahe	16	61	4	15	0	0	3	12	11	1	9	10	3	3	1	1	6
Stephen Vinson	12	23	1	7	0	0	0	5	2	0	0	0	2	2	2	0	1
Brett Olson	9	21	1	5	1	2	0	0	3	1	2	3	1	3	1	1	0

Derived Statistics

(sorted by points per game)

NAME	MIN/gm	PTS/gm	eFG%	FT Rate	REB/gm	AST/gm	TO/gm	AST:TO	STL/gm	BLK/gm
Wayne Simien	32.7	17.8	53.5%	44.41	9.3	1.2	2.2	0.5	0.9	0.9
Keith Langford	31.7	15.5	52.9%	27.34	5.0	3.5	2.4	1.4	1.1	0.6
JR Giddens	25.9	11.3	59.9%	6.06	3.6	0.8	1.1	0.8	0.7	0.6
Aaron Miles	33.8	9.1	45.8%	28.92	3.8	7.3	2.7	2.7	1.9	0.1
David Padgett	19.1	6.5	53.1%	20.00	4.5	1.1	1.6	0.7	0.4	1.4
Jeff Graves	18.1	6.4	62.2%	42.86	4.9	0.9	2.0	0.5	0.5	0.6
Michael Lee	18.5	5.5	48.6%	30.77	2.5	1.6	1.0	1.6	0.6	0.1
Jeff Hawkins	8.9	1.7	34.8%	12.12	0.6	0.6	0.5	1.2	0.4	0.1
Omar Wilkes	3.5	1.4	46.2%	23.08	0.9	0.1	0.3	0.3	0.2	0.0
Christian Moody	7.0	1.4	68.2%	22.73	1.0	0.2	0.4	0.4	0.2	0.2
Jeremy Case	3.9	1.2	33.3%	5.56	0.5	0.4	0.5	0.7	0.4	0.0
Bryant Nash	4.9	1.0	25.7%	34.29	1.3	0.2	0.5	0.5	0.1	0.3
Moulaye Niang	4.7	0.9	22.7%	63.64	1.1	0.1	0.2	0.6	0.3	0.2
Nick Bahe	3.8	0.7	36.7%	0.00	0.6	0.2	0.2	1.0	0.1	0.1
Brett Olson	2.3	0.3	20.0%	20.00	0.3	0.1	0.3	0.3	0.1	0.1
Stephen Vinson	1.9	0.2	14.3%	0.00	0.0	0.2	0.2	1.0	0.2	0.0

Player Ratings

cPSAN - "Total Impact"

PLAYER	cPSAN
Wayne Simien	162.89
Keith Langford	110.70
Aaron Miles	103.50
JR Giddens	84.79
David Padgett	46.04
Jeff Graves	43.68
Michael Lee	25.14
Moulaye Niang*	10.10
Omar Wilkes*	8.17
Bryant Nash*	5.23
Christian Moody*	1.61
Nick Bahe*	0.33
Brett Olson*	-1.11
Jeremy Case*	-1.79
Stephen Vinson*	-2.56
Jeff Hawkins	-9.66

cPSAN70 - "Efficiency"

PLAYER	cPSAN70
Wayne Simien	6.25
Omar Wilkes*	4.48
Keith Langford	4.24
JR Giddens	3.98
Aaron Miles	3.71
Moulaye Niang*	3.16
Jeff Graves	3.11
David Padgett	3.11
Michael Lee	2.26
Bryant Nash*	1.42
Christian Moody*	0.37
Nick Bahe*	0.22
Jeremy Case*	-0.87
Jeff Hawkins	-1.40
Brett Olson*	-2.11
Stephen Vinson*	-4.45

* Rating not based on enough data.

Player Analysis

This season ushered in the Bill Self Era with gusto. Although the Jayhawks finished just one overtime period away from a third consecutive Final Four appearance, they lost a January game to Richmond. In Allen Fieldhouse. To be fair, the Elite 8 appearance was helped by a couple of upsets in KU's path. That's not to take away from the credit the team deserves for showing up with the goods each of those tournament games. It just means that it would be unwise to think Kansas was one of the eight best teams that season simply based on its tournament finish.

There were plenty of personnel changes, even aside from coaching. The celebrated class of Collison, Gooden and Hinrich was finally gone. This was the first chance for the nucleus of Wayne Simien, Keith Langford and Aaron Miles to strut their stuff as the primary characters. They carried their own, for the most part. The incoming class led by David Padgett, JR Giddens, Omar Wilkes and Jeremy Case was supposed to provide some firepower to supplement the veterans.

This was definitely Simien's team. He led the team in total contributions and efficiency, both by overwhelming margins. But Simien's efficiency rating took a significant hit from the prior season. Mind you, it's still in the range of "star player" but not "superstar" like it was the previous season. He averaged nearly 18 PTS, 9 REB on 53.5 eFG% and a team-leading FT rate and very high FT%. What probably dragged Simien's rating down more than anything, compared to the last season, was the overall team performance. Providing roughly the same kind of numbers in the context of somewhat worse team performance can affect a player's efficiency rating significantly.

Expectations were sky high for Jeff Graves after his solid performance in the national championship game. But Graves' continued lack of discipline combined with the stress of all the changes in the program kept his performance from impressing too many observers. His efficiency was down about 1.50 from the prior season. Graves did shoot an impressive 62 eFG% and averaged 6 PTS, 5 REB in only 18 MIN/gm. To some, the hi-low offense seemed to operate more smoothly when he was in the game with Simien, although none of the three bigs (Simien, Padgett, Graves) were great passers.

The last piece of the three-headed-monster was promising freshman David Padgett. DPad turned in a solid freshman campaign, including his biggest highlight, the game-winning shot at the buzzer against archrival Missouri in the last game at the Hearnes Center. But many labeled Padgett as too soft. After transferring at the end of the season, Padgett indicated that he wanted to play at a school where he could shoot more from the perimeter a la Dirk Nowitzki. For the season, Padgett shot a healthy 53 eFG% while averaging 6.5 PTS, 4.5 REB and 1.4 BLK in only 19 MIN/gm.

In the backcourt, there were three solid (not spectacular) seasons put in by the starters. Langford shot 53 eFG% and averaged over 15 PTS, 5 REB, 3.5 AST and 1 STL. He had an all-around balanced game, failing to score in double figures in only four games all season. But Langford's efficiency rating was nearly identical to the prior season's rating.

The smooth-stroking Giddens, meanwhile, tore up the nets with nearly 60 eFG% and averaged 11 PTS and 3 REB as a mere freshman. However, he had the lowest FT rate of any player in the regular rotation. Many were frustrated to see Giddens' apparent athletic abilities go to waste by becoming merely a spot-up three-point shooter, but that's what he mostly focused on.

Miles had significant improvement from his freshman to sophomore season, but this time his efficiency rating was only marginally increased (about half a point). He bumped up his eFG% by about one percent while averaging 7.3 AST and a 2.7-to-1 AST:TO ratio. Miles' biggest barrier to star-like numbers was his shooting, but he played the role he was meant to play quite well.

The only other players with significant minutes were Michael Lee and Jeff Hawkins. Lee had only a fair season while shooting nearly 49 eFG%. Hawkins had the worst season on the team in terms of impact. There just isn't a whole lot to be gained from shooting 35 eFG%, except maybe a starting spot the next season.