Well, sort of. After the Saskatchewan Huskies won a national championship with Glover (a juco transfer) and a core of players from Canadian colleges (Mike Linklater, Troy Gottselig, and Michael Lieffers), I started wondering who else in the CCAA could make the same jump. And, more importantly, if there was any way to figure out who these players were without scouting them all. (Have you seen the cost of air travel in this country lately?)
What I did was find every player, going back as far as I could, who played in CCAA one year and CIS the next. The differences in their performance year-to-year then served as a rough approximation for the differences in level of play between the two leagues. It's the same logic behind the NHL projections that Gabe Desjardins has done (though he had a much larger sample size). We can then project this year's college stats as if they were next year's CIS stats, and see who could contribute at the next level.
We'll start today with the women's players.
Just as a sidebar note: if we had started last year instead, Anne Mercer (then with Lethbridge College) would absolutely have topped the list of players who could contribute at the CIS level. And who transferred to the University of Regina this year and ended up as a top-100 player in this league? Exactly.
Methodology notes
Since most non-Alberta conferences don't provide complete stats (my favourite: the OCAA, which publishes shots made but not shots taken), these conversions are mostly, in effect, ACAC-to-CIS, not CCAA-to-CIS. We do have an Atlantic player below, and the projection may not necessarily be right for her league if that league is at a lower level than Alberta, but it's the best we have.
Please note that I am also ignoring all the off-court factors, notably one's academics. I don't claim to know anything about these players' school careers, or in fact anything about them beyond a stat line and a roster bio. This is not a substitute for recruiting insight.
I tried to strike a balance between simple and informative for the statistics presented, but if you're a regular reader of mine you know which way that balance went. For each player we have points, rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals — all per-game — and then I've added per-40-minute averages for points and rebounds to give a better idea of the player's rates. As well, we have effective field-goal percentage (eFG%) and usage rate, a measure of how many of her team's possessions she used. At some level, it's silly to project anything, because the year-to-year performance is so volatile, especially when basing the projections on a few hundred minutes of college play, so keep that in mind too. The projections are more like a guess and a possibility rather than the median expected outcome. And "projected PER ranking" refers to all players with at least 300 minutes played last year; in other words, where this player's PER would have ranked among last year's players.
Finally, the stats below are "real" except for 2011-12 (obviously...) which is projected as noted. All players have at least two years of eligibility left.
Let's get into it ...
**
Andria Carlyon
6-2 forward, 3rd year, Grande Prairie Regional College
Season | Conf | Year | Minutes | Per Game | Per 40 | Percentages | ||||||
| PTS | REB | AST | BLK | STL | PTS | REB | eFG% | USG% | ||||
| 2009-10 | ACAC | 1st | 642 | 13.5 | 9.5 | 0.7 | 0.9 | 1.9 | 21.9 | 15.4 | 45.2% | 17.6% |
| 2010-11 | ACAC | 2nd | 701 | 21.9 | 12.9 | 2.5 | 1.1 | 2.0 | 30.0 | 17.6 | 50.5% | 32.9% |
| 2011-12 | CIS | 3rd | N/A | 17.5 | 10.0 | 1.2 | 0.7 | 0.6 | 24.0 | 13.7 | 49.0% | 28.6% |
This might be a bit of an overprojection. Her stats are great — monstrous, in some cases — but that's at one level and we're more interested in what she would do at a higher level. The scoring projection puts her in Jessica Clémençon territory. So ... yeah, an overprojection, because as uncertain as all of this is, I'm confident Carlyon will not be named the CIS athlete of the year. (Though she is no stranger to being named player of the year.)
Regardless of how often she's used, or her point-per-game totals, Carlyon's still a 6-2 post capable of shooting in the mid-to-high-40s. She may not average a double-double but do you know how many posts in CIS had an above-average PER in at least 500 minutes last year? I count about 17. So just talking in pure basketballese, two dozen teams could certainly find Carlyon some floor time, especially if the turnovers are brought down.
**
Rachel Caputo
5-7 guard, 4th year, SAIT
Season | Conf | Year | Minutes | Per Game | Per 40 | Percentages | ||||||
| PTS | REB | AST | BLK | STL | PTS | REB | eFG% | USG% | ||||
| 2008-09 | ACAC | 1st | 414 | 11.7 | 3.6 | 2.8 | 0.0 | 3.4 | 25.6 | 8.0 | 58.5% | 15.5% |
| 2009-10 | ACAC | 2nd | 586 | 14.8 | 3.0 | 2.6 | 0.0 | 2.6 | 24.8 | 6.0 | 41.0% | 15.2% |
| 2010-11 | ACAC | 3rd | 543 | 18.1 | 3.6 | 1.5 | 0.1 | 2.3 | 30.7 | 6.1 | 41.8% | 19.6% |
| 2011-12 | CIS | 4th | N/A | 14.5 | 2.8 | 0.8 | 0.1 | 1.2 | 21.8 | 4.7 | 40.6% | 17.1% |
Projected PER: 21.8, 62nd in CIS.
Had we done this study last year, Caputo wouldn't have made the cut. She was third on her team in shots taken, and wasn't really scoring at the levels one needs for one's stats to translate well. But her third year saw her role in the SAIT offence increase — her possessions used went up nearly 30% — and she topped 30 points per 40 minutes for the first time.
Having not seen her play (I've actually never seen any of these players before), I'm guessing she could move up. However, guards probably have an harder time making the leap to CIS than forwards do, so I'm honestly not sure what to expect from Caputo, should she transfer. Having only two years left works against her. As does the lack of a three-point game, if the stats don't lie on that front. But these aren't huge barriers, otherwise she wouldn't be on this list.
Anyway, she had a PER of 30.5 last year, on a good team. Let's not overcomplicate this.
**
Melanie Hogue
Forward, 2nd year, Holland College
Season | Conf | Year | Minutes | Per Game | Per 40 | Percentages | ||||||
| PTS | REB | AST | BLK | STL | PTS | REB | eFG% | USG% | ||||
| 2010-11 | ACAA | 1st | 413 | 12.1 | 12.3 | 0.7 | 0.8 | 1.7 | 22.2 | 22.7 | 40.6% | 15.1% |
| 2011-12 | CIS | 2nd | N/A | 9.6 | 9.6 | 0.3 | 0.5 | 0.2 | 17.6 | 17.6 | 39.5% | 13.1% |
Projected PER: 19.0, 97th in CIS.
Not to take anything away from the remaining players on the list, but there is a gap between the Killer Cs and the next three. In Hogue's case, she was named an ACAC second-team all-star in her rookie year, theoretically meaning there were at least five players in the conference who were better than her, and who knows how many others across the country. Yet here I have her as the only Atlantic representative.
Couple of reasons for that. One, we don't really have complete stats for the ACAA. I could very well be missing out on some better players, either completely or partially (if some games are missing). This type of sports league is often garbage-in, garbage-out situations when it comes to player statistics. Two, I skip over players in their fourth or fifth year, since this is The CIS Blog after all, and we're concerned more with who can make the jump.
Putting those aside, I can say the other reason Hogue's listed here is she was simply better than her conference-mates at those things that translate well into CIS play. Low turnovers, high rebounds — a good low-post player. I think she has the size to play the next level up, and a 28.1 PER in one's rookie year is hard to ignore. Still, if this were the MLB draft, she would probably be what used to be called a draft-and-follow. In other words, wait a year.
**
Bayan Kurd
5-9 guard, 3rd year, Grant MacEwan University
Season | Conf | Year | Minutes | Per Game | Per 40 | Percentages | ||||||
| PTS | REB | AST | BLK | STL | PTS | REB | eFG% | USG% | ||||
| 2009-10 | ACAC | 1st | 639 | 9.3 | 5.0 | 2.6 | 0.1 | 2.9 | 15.7 | 8.4 | 39.5% | 15.8% |
| 2010-11 | ACAC | 2nd | 515 | 11.1 | 4.1 | 1.4 | 0.1 | 1.9 | 20.7 | 7.7 | 50.4% | 13.7% |
| 2011-12 | CIS | 3rd | N/A | 9.1 | 3.2 | 0.7 | 0.1 | 0.5 | 16.9 | 6.0 | 48.9% | 11.9% |
Projected PER: 17.0, 121st in CIS.
Kurd seems more like a wing than a guard, but whatever she plays, she sure can fill out a statsheet. PER of 23.7. Multiple steals per game. And look, 50 for 127 on three-pointers last year ... maybe Scott Morrison should be reading this.
**
Kristen Monasterski
6-1 forward, 3rd year, Grant MacEwan University
Season | Conf | Year | Minutes | Per Game | Per 40 | Percentages | ||||||
| PTS | REB | AST | BLK | STL | PTS | REB | eFG% | USG% | ||||
| 2009-10 | ACAC | 1st | 242 | 4.9 | 3.4 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.5 | 20.3 | 13.9 | 52.3% | 5.7% |
| 2010-11 | ACAC | 2nd | 554 | 11.9 | 6.7 | 0.9 | 0.8 | 0.8 | 20.6 | 11.6 | 54.7% | 13.6% |
| 2011-12 | CIS | 3rd | N/A | 9.6 | 5.2 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.2 | 16.6 | 9.1 | 53.1% | 11.8% |
Projected PER: 18.6, 104th in CIS.
Another MacEwan player. Monasterski also provides yet another example of why you don't rely on per-game numbers, especially when someone gets so much more playing time from year to year. She more than doubled her PPG (that's good!), but her points per 40 minutes stayed the same, at 20-plus (that's...well, that's also good!). Her PER was 25.4.
As for her projection, the 53.1% effective field-goal percentage is quite high, but her projection assumes some three-pointers. Keep her in the paint and that drops to 50%, which may be more realistic.
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