StatWatch™: Ryan Evans Update

Following up on the Ryan Evans 2P% vs. FT% StatWatch™...

Evans had another terrible offensive game against Northwestern. He was 1-6 from the field, all two-pointers, and 2-5 from the line (and his 3 misses included a ridiculously short airball and an unintentional bank-shot). But the gap between his two-point FG percentage and his FT percentage narrowed because his 2P% got significantly worse. He's now shooting 40.5% from the line and 41.6% on twos.

For a while there I was thinking that Evans might be getting past his mental issues on free throws and shooting. But that appears to have been overly optimistic.

Incidentally, Evans's "true shooting percentage" (which accounts for the effective field goal percentage of twos, threes, and free throws) is historically bad this season, at 39.9%. Here is a list of players in the Bo Ryan era whose usage rate was at least 20% and whose TS% was less than 50%:

1.  Ryan Evans, 2010-11, 38.1%
2.  Ryan Evans, 2012-13, 39.9%
3.  Ryan Evans, 2009-10, 46.5%
4.  A. Tucker, 2005-06, 48.9%
5.  Brian Butch, 2004-05, 49.4%**
6.  M. Bruesewitz, 2011-12, 49.7%
7.  Ryan Evans, 2011-12, 49.8%

It's pretty remarkable for Ryan Evans to show up four times on that list of seven player-seasons, mainly because it's pretty unusual for Badgers to use up 20% of possessions in their freshman or sophomore years. It certainly appears that last year's decent (though still bad) shooting was an aberration.

That Evans is such a consistently inefficient contributor on offense is a testament to his defense and rebounding. As Sam Dekker said recently, “If you can play defense [for Bo Ryan] you’re going to be on the court regardless of how good you are offensively." Or how bad.


(**Note: I had to manually calculate Butch's estimated usage rate (~23%) and could be totally wrong.)