Looking back at 2009-10, 2010-11 projections

[NSDukeFan]

There is a long time between the team's final game (which unfortunately, like most years, was in March) and the start of the next regular season in November (or even summer league and the summer trip to China, as well as Countdown to Craziness and exhibition games.)
Since there is not a lot going on now and this is the only place I go where I could share this level of obsession, I thought I would share one of my pre-season rituals the last couple of years.

One of the main, if not the main, topics in the off-season is the projecting of playing time and scoring for the upcoming year. I always enjoy these discussions and have for the past couple of years written my projections down. I am certainly an optimist and for the past two years, at least, have expected the team would be very deep and that the top players would not need to play huge minutes. As you will see, I was, of course, wrong.

I have come to appreciate that coach K knows that in televised games, there are time-outs at least every 4 minutes and if his players are in great shape, the team can play its best players a lot of minutes, as long as he manages their physical workload the rest of the week.

Here is a table with my projections (Proj.) for 2009-10 vs. actual minutes (mpg) and points per game (ppg)


2009-2010
Player Proj. mpg Proj. ppg
Jon 31 37 17 18.2
Kyle 31 36 19 17.7
Nolan 27 35.5 12 17.4
Lance 23 25 8 4.8
Brian 20 19 8 5.6
Mason 20 14 7.5 3.7
Ryan 15 6.5 6.5 1.2
Andre 15 12.6 6.5 4.4
Miles 11 16.4 3.5 5.2
Olek 3 10 1 2.5

I expected an improvement from Nolan, but certainly not the great jump he made from sophomore to junior year. I also vastly underestimated the minutes the big 3 would end up playing. I also underestimated the jump that Miles would make and was premature in what I had expected for Mason, Andre and especially Ryan. I had actually hoped for more scoring from Lance and Zoubs in a similar amount of minutes, but I will happily take the contributions they gave.




2010-11
Player Proj mpg Proj ppg Proj rpg Proj apg Proj bpg
Kyle 29 35 19 17 8 6.8 3 1.6 1 0.3
Nolan 27 34 18 20.6 4.5 3.5 5.1
Kyrie 25 27.5 12 17.5 6 4.3
Miles 22 17 7 4.8 8 4.9 1.5 0.5
Mason 22 25.6 9 7.2 6 8.4 1.5 1.6 1.5 1.7
Seth 22 25 10 9 2 2
Ryan 21 20 8 6.6 5 3.7 1.5 0.8 1.4 1.4
Andre 17 21 7 8.1 1
Josh 10 6 3 1.4
Tyler 4 10 1 1.6


I again vastly underestimated the minutes that Kyle and Nolan would play. Kyle's numbers didn't increase like I had hoped, but Nolan took another jump, especially in assists. I overestimated all the bigs rebound numbers, except for Mason and I didn't expect Nolan (and Kyrie when he was in) to grab as many rebounds as he did. Andre increased his minutes and points more than I had projected, while Miles and Ryan were a bit below where I had thought/ hoped. Mason rebounded more, but scored a bit less than what I had projected.

It's a fun exercise I have done the past couple of years that I thought I would share, in case anyone was interested, or had any comments.

[darjum]

I found this interesting to read and made me reevaluate my own expectations of Duke last year. Obviously very few (hopefully none) Duke fans liked how the season ended, but it was a really interesting journey full of twists and in the end quite some drama.

In regards to your projections I had similar hope for either Miles or Ryan and especially in Miles case he didn't come on strong until the second half of the season. Will be interesting to see how they do moving forward. If Miles is going to make the leap to quality full-time ACC starter...this is it obviously!

I also found it interesting that you didn't project any Duke player to have over 30 minutes and maybe had Kyrie played the entire year perhaps they wouldn't have? Kyrie taking minutes away from Nolan and maybe a few more blow out victories leading to early bench clearing for Singler? Or maybe K just rides his Snr's for one more year and they still play heavy minutes.

At this stage it's hard to project any Duke player avg over 30 minutes again. MP2 maybe, River's if he fulfills his potential? Too many options in the back court for a guard to realistically expects minutes if everyone is healthy. I have a feeling MP2 will be relied on heavily for his rim protection, but he too has some serious rivals for minutes.

Anyway, thanks for posting, it was a good read.

[NSDukeFan]

I found this interesting to read and made me reevaluate my own expectations of Duke last year. Obviously very few (hopefully none) Duke fans liked how the season ended, but it was a really interesting journey full of twists and in the end quite some drama.

In regards to your projections I had similar hope for either Miles or Ryan and especially in Miles case he didn't come on strong until the second half of the season. Will be interesting to see how they do moving forward. If Miles is going to make the leap to quality full-time ACC starter...this is it obviously!

I also found it interesting that you didn't project any Duke player to have over 30 minutes and maybe had Kyrie played the entire year perhaps they wouldn't have? Kyrie taking minutes away from Nolan and maybe a few more blow out victories leading to early bench clearing for Singler? Or maybe K just rides his Snr's for one more year and they still play heavy minutes.

At this stage it's hard to project any Duke player avg over 30 minutes again. MP2 maybe, River's if he fulfills his potential? Too many options in the back court for a guard to realistically expects minutes if everyone is healthy. I have a feeling MP2 will be relied on heavily for his rim protection, but he too has some serious rivals for minutes.

Anyway, thanks for posting, it was a good read.

Thanks for the reply. I am expecting big things from Miles, Mason and Ryan this year. I expect both Miles and Ryan will get starts this year and think Mason will start most, if not every, games.
Like many, I expect big things from the end of the team's bench, even though it is hard to keep more than 8 players consistently involved. I did expect more blowouts if Kyrie had played the whole season and hadn't expected Kyle or Nolan would have been needed for as many minutes as the previous year, when there weren't a lot of options in the backcourt (as always, thank you very much Andre for enrolling early.) I was, of course, wrong.
I agree with you that I would have difficulty projecting more than 30 minutes for anyone next year. I have great expectations for our freshmen, even though I only expect Austin to be in the top 6 in minutes played. I realize there isn't a Jon, Nolan or Kyle on next year's team, but if coach K finds his best player(s) is/are fit enough and smart enough to play extended minutes, he will keep him(them) in.

I know there will be some players that won't get extended minutes, but how do you not play Tyler, who has shown good defensive intensity, reasonable ability to get others involved offensively and is likely to be improved after another summer at Duke? Or how does Josh not see minutes after a freshman to sophomore jump? How does Quinn not play a lot, with his ability to score and distribute (and hopefully defend?) How do Alex and Gbinijie not see lots of minutes as versatile swing men? Yet, I expect some of these outstanding players won't see a lot of minutes just because some of the upperclassmen are better.

As always, I will project what I think will happen this year and have a lot of fun discussing it here and as always, I will be wrong. Whatever happens, I know I will enjoy this season with lots of talented youth on the Duke men's basketball team.