Earlier in the season I noted with surprise that Nigel Hayes was leading the Badgers in minutes. Surprisingly, it has persisted.
It is very unusual for a forward to lead the Badgers in minutes under Bo Ryan. The last player to do it was Mike Wilkinson in 2005. (Alando came close, but was narrowly edged out by Kam Taylor in both 2006 and 2007.
Right now, Hayes is leading with 76.7% of minutes played, followed by Kaminsky at 74.4% and then Gasser at 71%. Going into the season, I expected Gasser to be a guy who rarely left the floor. That may be the case in Big Ten play as Bo shortens his bench a bit, and when there will (probably?) be fewer blowouts with garbage time. But Koenig has been stealing time for both Gasser and Jackson, and I don't really expect that to stop either.
Still, I'm guessing Gasser plays more during the conference season, and that he'll have a good shot of surpassing Nigel and Frank for the team lead. It's something I'll be keeping an eye on.
be careful with using three sig figs in your percentages - gives a misleading view of the precision of the minutes played stats, which can be off by almost a minute (and if a player is playing 25 minutes a game, a 30 second difference is a 2% difference right there, just with data not being accurate).
ReplyDeleteInteresting point. Should probably cite that these stas are from Kenpom.com (including the significant digits). I believe his Min% stat is just total minutes played divided by team minutes divided by five, so it really just another way of expressing total minutes played.
DeleteGotcha - remind me to feed you the actual minutes/seconds played once I catch up on my spreadsheet.
ReplyDelete