Originally Posted by
Kedsy
See that's the thing. Having one OAD player doesn't make it an "OAD team." Here is the percentage of minutes played by freshmen in each of the last 10 seasons:
2009: 10.5% (S16)
2010: 14.5% (title)
2011: 10.9% (S16)
2012: 23.8% (1st rd)
2013: 23.6% (E8)
2014: 19.8% (1st rd)
2015: 50.0% (title)
2016: 46.8% (S16)
2017: 33.4% (2nd rd)
2018: 67.5% (E8)
2012 wasn't a freshman-dominated team any more than 2013 was (and 2013 was considered a veteran team). And 2014 had fewer freshman minutes than either.
I agree with Jason that the only years we truly had a freshman-centric team were the last four seasons (and of those four, the team that that did worst in the NCAA tournament was the team that had the fewest freshman minutes).
Alternatively, we can also use a metric that values the regular season. In this case, I use NCAA tournament seeding (I found a page on Wiki that had all the data in one table).
'09 2 10.50% S16)
'10 1 14.50% title)
'11 1 10.90% S16)
'12 2 23.80% 1st rd)
'13 2 23.60% E8)
'14 3 19.80% 1st rd)
'15 1 50.00% title)
'16 4 46.80% S16)
'17 2 33.40% 2nd rd)
'18 2 67.50% E8)
It's the last four years where freshman have been so prominent in playing time. Have we done worse the last four years than the six previous years? Let's see... The last four years we have been seeded an average of 2.25 but won a total of 12 NCAA games (average of three). The six previous years we were seeded an average of 1.83 and won 13 NCAA games (average of 2.17). Not much difference, I would say.
We didn't win as many games as the seeding would predict (which is inevitably the case for high-seeded teams).
Sage Grouse
---------------------------------------
'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013