Going Pro

Sam Dekker started out this season projected as a possible mid to late first round pick in this year's NBA draft. He dropped a bit in the early season, but has been showing back up in the 20s again. This is all very premature as there is a lot of season left, and much of the player's draft status will be determined at the tryouts and camps after the season.

I would love to see Dekker play another season or 2 at UW, but I am of the opinion that any UW player who could be a first-round pick should go pro. With the new collective bargaining agreement, NBA first round picks are guaranteed 2 year contracts and will make over a million dollars even if they get cut and don't make their NBA roster. Even the 30th pick in the draft will get a minimum salary of about $750,000 each year. That is a lot of money. Too much money for a 20 year old kid to turn down. It's enough money to give you the opportunity to do whatever you want to do for the rest of your life, as long as that isn't buying drugs, cars, and other crap.

It's great for fans if players stick around, but there is just too much risk in not taking that money if they can be a first round pick. One blown out knee and there goes your million dollars.

StatWatch™: Sam Dekker leading in Points & Rebounds

After today's double-double, Sam Dekker has now surpassed Frank Kaminsky as the Badgers' leading scorer and extended his lead in the rebounding department.

Under Bo Ryan, the only players to lead the team in both scoring and rebounding are Alando Tucker, Brian Butch, and Jon Leuer.

Sam Dekker is going to be great

The Badgers went 4-1 on their Canadian tour, and Sam Dekker pretty much dominated every game, except for one game when he got in foul trouble. I got to watch most of the stream of the Ryerson game, which included these two Dekker assists, on back-to-back possessions:



I'm going to enjoy watching Sam play for the next couple of years.

--Bart Torvik

StatWatch: Three Pointers

Two Badgers are in striking distance of significant single-season three-point-shooting accomplishments.

First, Ben Brust is within shouting distance of the single-season record for most three-pointers made. He currently is 71 for 181 from three on the season. The Badger record for most threes made in a season is 78, by Sean Mason in 1998-99. Over his last 13 games, Brust is averaging 2.6 threes per game. So if the Badgers get a win in either tournament, he's got a good chance.

Second, Sam Dekker is currently 47 for 110 from three. With three more threes he will join the prestigious 50-three club. Just 20 other Badgers (including Brust, obviously) have hit at least 50 threes in a single season—and only one of them did it as a freshman: Devin Harris. (Piece of trivia: Dekker currently trails both Harris and Jeremy Hall on the list of most threes by a freshman. Hall hit 49 threes as a freshman in 1996, his only season with the Badgers.) Again, if the Badgers can win one game in either tournament, Dekker's got a good chance to get to 50.

Third, Dekker will likely finish the season with the second-best three-point shooting percentage by a Badger freshman. He's currently at 42.7%. Tim Locum holds the record at 44.1% and Hennssy Auriantal is currently second at 39.8%. Assuming Dekker shoots 10 more threes, he'd need to hit 6 of them to get to 44.2%. If he went 0-10 he'd fall below Auriantal. He'd have to go 0 for 17 to fall behind Hall for third place.

One other note: Dekker already qualifies for the career three-point percentage list because he has over 100 attempts. At 42.7% for his career, he's currently the fourth-best three-point shooter in Badgers history. He trails only Tim Locum (47.2%), Trent Jackson (44.9%), and Brian Good (43.1%).

UPDATE: There is one stat in which Dekker has surpassed Harris when comparing their freshman seasons: most three-pointers made during conference play. Dekker went 28 for 66; Harris went 27 for 75 his freshman season. Of course, the conference season was only 16 games back then, but Harris still played a lot more minutes and took more attempts.

StatWatch™ Update: Now tracking Dekker's eFG%

Here are the developments in various stats I've been tracking for the Badger basketball team, and some research into an exciting new one.

Ryan Evans's 2P% vs. FT%:  Evans has had a couple decent games offensively last week. He shot 10-19 on twos, and went 4-6 with his new jump-shot free throws. But the gap between his 2P% and FT% widened a little. He's now shooting 42.3% from two and 41.7% from the line.

Badgers' Defense under 1 PPP: This streak came to a surprising end against Purdue. Terone Johnson had a real nice day, hitting all kinds of runners and floaters, which are exactly the kind of shots that Wisconsin wants opponents to be taking. He came into the game hitting just 40.7% of his twos (worse than Ryan Evans!) yet went 7-14 against the Badgers (after missing a few runners in the final minutes when the game was out of hand). Gotta tip your cap to him.

Sam Dekker O-Rating over 150: This streak also came to an end. Dekker had another nice game offensively, with 10 points on 8 shots, 3 assists and no turnovers. It adds up to an O-Rating of 144. Still good, but not good enough.

Sam Dekker in Double Digits: Dekker managed to continue this streak, which is now up to six games. Now only Devin Harris has a longer streak of 10-point games in conference by a freshman under Bo Ryan. Dekker can tie that streak on Thursday.

In other news, with another good shooting performance against Purdue, Dekker's effective field goal percentage (eFG) is now up over 60% for the season. This is sensational. Since 2005 (when Pomeroy's player stats begin) Dekker is the only Badgers with an eFG over 60 and a usage rate above 20. (Dekker's usage rate is 21.2.) The only other player who had a season with an eFG% over 60 and a usage rate above 15 was Keaton Nankivil in 2011 (61.8% eFG, 17.2% usage). The only other Badgers over 60 at all are Rob Wilson in '10 (60.2%) and Tim Jarmusz in '09 (62.7%), but they were bit players those years and don't qualify.

I went back and looked at all the final stats for Badger teams since 1987-88. I certainly could have missed some (since I had to calculate eFG manually for most of the years) but these are the only Badgers I found who contributed significantly and had an eFG over 60:

Tim Locum, 1988-89: 66.8%
Tim Locum, 1989-90: 66.6%
P. Thompkins, '90-'91: 64.5%
B. Good, 1991-92: 63.4%
A. Kilbride, 1992-'93: 60.2%

I haven't done the calculations, but I'd guess that only Thompkins actually had a usage rate over 20%. Locum averaged around 10 ppg in those two years, though, so those were certainly impressive seasons in any event. (By comparison, Kilbride and Good averaged 7 and 6 points respectively—I'd guess their usage was under 15%.)

Conclusion: Sam Dekker is looking like the best pure shooter the Badgers have had since before Stu Jackson came to town.

Sam Dekker is On Fire

Dekker extended his streak of double-digit scoring games to five with an ultra-efficient performance against Nebraska last night. He scored 19 points on just six shots and also dished out four assists, including a couple of spectacular ones. All told, he had an outstanding offensive rating of 199, which roughly translated means the Badgers scored 2 points on every offensive possession that he did something.

This leads me to another streak that Dekker now has going: four straight games with an offensive rating over 150, which is pretty incredible. I don't have access to game-by-game O-rating data prior to this year, but my guess is that no Badger has had this kind of streak in conference play since Jordan Taylor's magical run in 2010-11. Certainly no one else has come close to this level of consistent efficiency this year. Here are all this years' 150+ O-ratings against top-200 kenpom teams (minimum 15 minutes played and 5 field goals attempted):

1.    Dekker, Neb., 199
2.    Dekker, Ill., 194
3.    Dekker, @NW, 183
4.    Marshall, @Ia, 178
5.    Dekker, OSU, 166
6.    Berggren, @NW, 156
7.    Bruesewitz, PSU, 156
8.    Berggren, Cal, 155
9.    Brust, Neb., 154
10.  Dekker, @MN, 153
11.  Kaminsky, @Ill., 151
12.  Brueswitz, @OSU, 151
13.  Berggren, OSU, 150

As you can see, Dekker has five of these 13 performances, including one in each of the last four games, the three best, and four of the top five. He's really good, and he is on fire right now.

Another thing to note about that list is that only one of those performances came in the non-conference portion of the schedule. This is partly because the Badgers played six games against sub-200 teams; but a bigger factor is that the Badgers played pretty poorly on offense against most of their decent competition prior to conference play. In other words, they seem to be getting better.

StatWatch™: Sam Dekker & the 300-point Club

Sam Dekker has now scored in double-figures each of the last four games, and he is moving up the charts for freshman scoring under Bo Ryan.  He passed Josh Gasser during the Michigan game, and now has 248 points on the season. This puts him behind only Wilkinson (299), Tucker (385), and Harris (394) for most points scored by a freshman under Bo Ryan. Here's the StatWatch™: Will Dekker score join Tucker and Harris as the only 300-point scoring freshmen in the Bo Ryan era?

Chances are very good. He's currently averaging a little over 9 points a game, and the Badgers have at least 6 games left. So he'll do it as long as he gets his average the rest of the way in—and indications are strong that his role in the offense is only increasing.

Dekker's scoring as a true freshman is all the more remarkable given that he is playing behind three seniors. Tucker, Wilkinson, and Harris all played their freshmen seasons on teams with basically no upperclassmen, much less upperclassmen at their position.

Obviously Dekker needs to improve his overall game, but his career is off to a great start and the future looks very, very bright.

For the record, here's the list of freshman who scored at least 100 points under Bo Ryan:

Harris, 394
Tucker, 385
Wilkinson, 299
Dekker, 248
Gasser, 202
J-Bo, 151
Marshall, 123
Krabby, 111