On Sunday, the ACC announced that its Men’s Basketball Player of the Year (POY) was Duke’s Jahlil Okafor, the Blue Devils’ freshman phenom and 6’11” center. Notre Dame’s Jerian Grant came in second, with fourteen votes to Okafor’s forty-four. The purpose of this post is to compare the two players to see if the voters got it wrong.
To clear up my central conceit, I did not consider any other players given the discrepancy in voting. After Grant’s fourteen votes, the next-highest vote-getter was Virginia’s Malcom Brogdon, Jr. with three. Thus, and because we are a blog about Notre Dame, after all, symmetry and simplicity begged for a two player comparison. As another point of clarification, I did not delve into advanced stats, mainly because of time constraints, and tried to present as fair a sample of indicators as I could., meaning I picked “center” stats and “guard” stats, for that is what Jerian plays.
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So who was the runaway winner? When you put the players head-to-head, the case for Okafor is not as strong as the vote would indicate. A 6’11” center, he did the things one normally associates with five position well: he scored points and grabbed rebounds. He grabbed a ton of rebounds. For historical comparison, a 7’0 freshman center at Georgetown, Patrick Ewing, grabbed 279 total rebounds in his freshman year. Over 37 games. Okafor did so in only 30. Ewing also scored fewer points, 469, again, in seven more games.
Jerian Grant did the “guard” thing pretty well, too. At 6’5″, he’s taller than your normal point guard, but point guard is what he plays, with the Irish starting with the ball in his hand. He scores well, distributes the ball very well (207 assists), defends very well (56 steals), and turns the ball over infrequently (64 turnovers). Heck, Golson had 22 turnovers in thirteen games. Yeah.
Head-to-head, Okafor scored more points in fewer, a lot fewer, minutes. His 529 points came in just 922 minutes. Grant’s 521 came in 1131. In big games, against big competition, Grant came up short. Against North Carolina, Virginia, and away at Duke, Grant was mired in single digits. Okafor didn’t have those games, for example scoring 22 points away at Notre Dame and 20 at home. As scorers, then, Okafor comes out on top. For what it’s worth, too, Okafor’s shooting percentage is better as well, 66.8% versus 49.4%.
Head-to-head, Grant runs away with some pretty critical metrics: turnovers and free-throw percentage. If Okafor has a flaw, and as a freshman you cannot blame him for having flaws, it’s his free-throw percentage. Frankly, shooting 52.4% from the stripe isn’t good and at the next level, whether playing center or power forward, will be a major liability.
If a year is made of weeks, it should be noted that Grant pips Okafor, too, when it comes to conference recognition as Player of the Week, which Grant has been twice. Okafor was selected as Player of the Week but once.
So, the case can be made that the ACC POY voters got it right. And the case can be made that the ACC POY voters got it wrong. In my opinion, Grant should have won the award for having the “better” overall season, for instance Grant beats Okafor’s teammate and point guard Quinn Cook in most categories, and for being the conductor and star of one of the better offenses in college basketball. Still, Okafor is the star of one of the sport’s most prominent teams. Sound familiar?
Hating Hurricanes Since 1990.
Bayou Irish is a Jersey boy and Double Domer who fell under New Orleans' spell in 1995. He's been through Katrina and fourteen years in the Coast Guard, so we cut him some slack, mostly in the form of HLS-subsidized sazeracs. But, when he's not face down on the bar and communing with the ghosts of Faulkner and Capote at the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone, he's our man in SEC-land, doing his best to convince everyone around him that Graduation Success Rate is a better indicator of success than the number of MNC's won in the last five years.
- Finding Flaws in a Diamond: Clemson’s Rushing Offense - December 17, 2018
- Why Nobody Will Cotton to Notre Dame - December 3, 2018
- Irish Finish Regular Season Perfect 12-0 - November 26, 2018
Okafur’s stats are a little off because his 3 pt. % should be N/A as well, and all the rest of the stats have moved over to the left one column. It should be: FT%: 52.4%, TRB: 276, AST: 44, STL: 23, BLK 41.
Took me a minute to figure out what was going on, but the comparison definitely looked off at first. 276 steals would be a pretty amazing year!
Hey Laughing Tulkas: thanks for reading and for commenting. I think I fixed the table and I really appreciate your pointing it out.