Originally Posted by
CDu
So, there has been a lot of consternation about this season, and understandably so. It was certainly not what we'd hoped for. And some of that was the result of our freshman class struggling. That's not an unexpected outcome, as the ratings for most of those guys weren't consistent with being immediate stars. Johnson of course should have been better (he was good, but not as good as we needed him to be), but guys like Steward, Roach, and Williams all did fairly well given their recruiting rankings. But, of our four top-25 freshmen, only two (and hopefully it remains two!) appear to be heading into their sophomore years at Duke. And not surprisingly, they are the two who had the worst per-game averages over the course of the season.
So with that, I wanted to see how recent returnees have fared for Duke. I took the 2016-2021 seasons as this was when the team really started to experience the massive season-to-season roster turnover. Prior to that, the year-to-year roster was more stable with lots of returning vets that made it harder to gauge the development of those returning top-25s. Well, that and we didn't have many returning top-25s in the 5 years prior; they were either outside the top-25 or they went pro.
So, without further clarification, here is the list of top-25 recruits that returned for the 2016 to 2021 seasons:
2015-16 season: Grayson Allen (#24 in RSCI for the 2014 high school class)
2016-17: Chase Jeter (#14), Luke Kennard (#21)
2017-18: Marques Bolden (#11)
2018-19: None
2019-20: Tre Jones (#13)
2020-21: Matthew Hurt (#12), Wendell Moore (#25)
Now let's look at the per-100 possession stats for each from the freshman to sophomore years. Note: I used the per-100 stats to avoid overstating improvement simply coming from more playing time. Here are those numbers:
Allen 2015: 28.8 points, 6.6 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 1.9 steals, 2.8 turnovers, 42.5 fg%, 34.6 3pt%, 84.9 ft%
Allen 2016: 34.6 points, 7.3 rebounds, 5.6 assists, 2.1 steals, 3.2 turnovers, 46.6 fg%, 41.7 3pt%, 83.7 ft%
Jeter 2016: 14.3 points, 14.0 rebounds, 2.1 blocks, 13.6 fouls, 55.3 fg%, 54.1 ft%
Jeter 2017: 9.9 points, 10.3 rebounds, 4.1 blocks, 7.5 fouls, 50.0 fg%, 55.6 ft%
Kennard 2016: 25.9 points, 7.8 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 2.1 steals, 1.7 turnovers, 42.1 fg%, 32.0 3pt%, 88.9 ft%
Kennard 2017: 31.5 points, 8.2 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 1.4 steals, 2.6 turnovers, 48.9 fg%, 43.8 3pt%, 85.6 ft%
Bolden 2017: 13.5 points, 9.5 rebounds, 0.7 assists, 0.7 steals, 2.6 blocks, 4.0 turnovers, 11.7 fouls, 45.7 fg%, 62.5 ft%
Bolden 2018: 16.8 points, 15.6 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 1.3 steals, 4.2 blocks, 4.2 turnovers, 6.0 fouls, 61.5 fg%, 59.3 ft%
Jones 2019: 15.0 points, 6.0 rebounds, 8.5 assists, 3.0 steals, 2.4 turnovers, 41.4 fg%, 26.2 3pt%, 75.8 ft%
Jones 2020: 25.1 points, 6.6 rebounds, 9.9 assists, 2.8 steals, 4.2 turnovers, 42.3 fg%, 36.1 3pt%, 77.1 ft%
Hurt 2020: 26.0 points, 10.1 rebounds, 2.3 assists, 1.2 steals, 2.0 blocks, 2.3 turnovers, 48.7 fg%, 39.3 3pt%, 74.1 ft%
Hurt 2021: 32.4 points, 10.9 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.3 steals, 1.3 blocks, 2.1 turnovers, 55.6 fg%, 44.4 3pt%, 72.4 ft%
Moore 2020: 17.0 points, 9.7 rebounds, 4.3 assists, 2.0 steals, 5.6 turnovers, 41.6 fg%, 21.1 3pt%, 80.6 ft%
Moore 2021: 20.4 points, 10.0 rebounds, 5.6 assists, 2.5 steals, 4.2 turnovers, 41.7 fg%, 30.1 3pt%, 84.8 ft%
With the exception of Jeter, everyone else saw a substantive improvement in their scoring rates. That's not surprising: guys tend to get better with age, and their role tends to increase. So no big shock. But digging deeper into the stats finds some interesting findings.
For the guards/wings, everyone saw a 7+% jump in 3pt percentage. Jones and Moore, the two bad shooters as freshmen, improved their 3pt% by 10% and 9%. Jones saw a HUGE increase in scoring, as he went from the 4th/5th option to a primary weapon. His assists improved, but his turnovers increased (a function of a much bigger role). Allen and Moore took on substantially larger ballhandling duties as sophomores, and they each saw a nearly doubling of their assist/turnover ratio. Kennard and Jones saw their assists go up but their assist/turnover ratio go down a bit, as much of their role was an increase in scoring burden.
For the bigs, the sample size is just two guys. One of whom got worse (Jeter) and one who got notably better (Bolden). In Bolden's case, his rebounding, assists, blocks, fg%, and fouls improved dramatically, while his scoring improved a fair amount but not quite to the degree as his other stats. For Jeter, his scoring and rebounding declined, but his blocks and foul rates improved drastically.
So what does that mean for our two potential returnees? Perhaps little, as the sample size is small (N=2 for bigs, N=4 for littles). But it can at least give a guide as to the ranges of reasonable improvement. For the guards, it appears that 3pt shooting should probably see a 5+% bump from the prior year. Assist/turnover ratio should improve as well, although that's less of a given. And scoring rate should increase by at 15-20%. For bigs, foul rate went down a lot, and block rate went up a lot. But beyond that, things could go either way.
For reference, here are the per-100 for Roach and Williams this past year:
Roach 2020-21: 18.4 points, 4.5 rebounds, 5.8 assists, 1.7 steals, 4.1 turnovers, 45.6 fg%, 31.3 3pt%, 67.5 ft%
Williams 2020-2021: 27.1 points, 17.0 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 2.2 steals, 5.3 blocks, 3.3 turnovers, 5.6 fouls, 66.4 fg%, 53.7 ft%
Now, I'll be honest here: I don't know that we can reasonably expect Williams to improve much upon his per-100 numbers from last year. They already dwarf those sophomore numbers from either Bolden or Jeter (which makes sense, as he was a starter and they were not). In his case, just playing more minutes at the same rates would lead to a terrific stat line. I hope the foul rate drops a bit more (maybe to around 4-5 per 100) and the other stats remain where they are or perhaps improve slightly. It's going to be really hard to do much more than he's already doing. Maybe he can get to the 25-30 points (he might take a hit in scoring with Banchero and Griffin arriving, 18 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, 6 blocks, 3 turnovers, and 4 fouls per 100 possession range.
As for Roach, there are really two areas for him to show big improvement: 3pt shooting and assist/turnover ratio. He's already a spectacular shooter from 2pt range (59% is amazing for a guard). He could do more with the steals, but that doesn't appear to be something that dramatically improves from freshman to sophomore year. Based on recent history, the 7+% improvement in 3pt shooting that each of the recent returning top-25 guards achieved would be a huge boon. It would push him into the 38% range as opposed to his current 31%. That would be fantastic, and would make him a legitimate 3pt threat. The assist/turnover ratio is a bit more of a gray area. Wendell Moore and Allen basically doubled theirs, but they did so going from being basically off-ball players to more prominent ballhandlers, whereas Roach was already a ballhandler. So I don't think doubling his ratio is a reasonable baseline expectation. Conversely, he's not likely to be asked to take on the increased scoring burden that Jones and Kennard had, so I wouldn't expect his A/TO to get worse. So probably splitting the difference makes the most sense: something like a 40-50% improvement in A/TO ratio. So let's conservatively say he has the following per-100 line next year based on the averages from the previous guys, and assuming a slightly smaller increase in 3pt% and a 40% improvement in A/TO:
20 points, 5 rebounds, 7 assists, 2 steals, 3.5 turnovers, 46.0 fg%, 37.0 3pt%, 70.0 ft%.
If we assume a ~68 possession game like this year, and we assume 32 mpg for Roach and 30 mpg for Williams, that would work out to the following per-game lines:
Roach: 10.9 points, 2.7 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 1.1 steals, 1.9 turnovers, and 46.0 fg% and 37.0 3pt%.
Williams: 13.8 points, 9.0 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1.0 steals, 3.0 blocks, 2.5 fouls.
Since both of those sets are on the conservative side of the "typical" improvements of guys in their range at Duke in recent years, let's look at a slightly more aggressive set of assumptions. If we assume the ~80% improvement of A/TO and an 8% 3pt% improvement instead of just a 40% improvement and 6% improvement in 3pt%, and if we assume Williams does see some meaningful improvement in scoring and rebound rate, then we get something like this:
Roach: 10.9 points, 2.7 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 1.1 steals, 1.7 turnovers, 47.0 fg%, 39.0 3pt%
Williams: 15.1 points, 10.1 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1.0 steals, 3.0 blocks, 2.5 fouls.
So, my rough per-game expectations for those two (if they return) would be something like:
Roach: 10-12 ppg, 2.5-3 rebounds per game, 3.5-4.5 assists per game, 1-1.2 steals per game, 1.8-2.2 turnovers per game, 46-48% fg%, 37-40% 3pt%
Williams: 14-15 ppg, 8-10 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 3 blocks, 2.5 fouls
Anything more than that would be amazing, and less would be okay but perhaps disappointing (depending upon the performance of other players).