Calculated Reactions: Top women's basketball prospects (Alberta, Ontario, Atlantic)

Last year, we looked at a handful of players from the B.C., Alberta, and Atlantic college leagues whose statistics suggested they could contribute at the CIS level (see here, here, and here). Now that the 2012 CCAA nationals are upon us, it's time to go prospecting again. Today we look at nine women's players from ACACOCAA, and ACAA schools.

Every category — from shooting percentages to rebounds to steals to percentage of shots taken that are three-pointers to usage rate — is projected based on historical averages for players going from one level to the next in consecutive years. With eight more players actually making the jump last year, we now have the equivalent of about 4,000 minutes from players who have played CCAA one year and CIS the next. (We'd have the entire UBC Okanagan team if the B.C. league made their women's stats available, hint-hint.) All these CCAA-to-CIS players are the basis for our assumptions about the relative level of the two leagues: for example, if three-point percentage tends to drop by 10% among these players on average, that's the translation we apply to everyone's college stats. Obviously there are several factors we're not accounting for, and 4,000 minutes is really only one full team-season of play at the CIS level, but this does serve as a handy way to identify the standouts among hundreds of CCAA players across the country, and to (for lack of a better word) ignore those whose overall game might not translate to the CIS level.

Minutes played are projected this year for the first time, though projecting playing time is generally an even more foolish thing to do than projecting rate stats, and so those numbers should not be taken seriously. The per-game statistics assume each player appears in 20 games; the projected season stats are therefore simply divided by 20 for everyone. Minutes for OCAA players had to be calculated from each individual boxscore, since seasonal information was not available on the OCAA player profiles. (This is progress: last year they provided shots made but not shots taken.) And some schools had impossibly low numbers of minutes played, which meant we had to adjust the minutes up for everyone to match how many games that team played — noted with * where adjusted.

Also note that these stats are a few weeks out of date for those who have had playoff games, but include earlier non-conference play.

More information on the methodology can be found here.

Eligibility years are as of 2012-13, so "2nd year" means she just completed her first. All years I could find are included, but the projection depends only on '11-12. Listed heights are taken from, in order of preference, rosters, media reports, or wild guesses.

And finally, as always, remember this is not a substitute for recruiting insight. In most (all?) cases we know nothing about these players aside from a stat line and a roster bio, and are making no value judgement beyond that which is visible in a boxscore.

With all of that out of the way, here are the nine players:

--

Jessilyn Fairbanks
5-6 guard, 2nd year, Grant MacEwan University
Season
Conf
Year
Minutes
Per Game
Per 40
eFG%UsagePER
PTSREBASTBLKSTLPTSREB
2011-12
ACAC
1st
407
11.8
2.4
2.5
0.3
2.8
23.1
4.6
54.0%
23.1%
40.3
2012-13
CIS
2nd
350
6.5
1.5
1.5
0.1
2.0
14.9
3.5
49.8%
20.6%
21.2

Very few college players have a projected CIS PER above 20, and fewer still are just one year out of high school.

Highly-recruited out of Edmonton's Harry Ainlay, Fairbanks is now playing for Ainlay's former coach at Grant Mac, perhaps part of the reason she didn't go CIS right away. Aside from not starting half of MacEwan's games, which could be due to some bad data entry, her stats show no sign of nagging injury from her knee surgery in April 2009 2010. She had the second-highest eFG% in Alberta and the best assist-to-turnover ratio.

Oh, and a PER of 40.3. As a rookie.




Brittany Gilliss
5-6 guard, 2nd year, St. Thomas University
Season
Conf
Year
Minutes
Per Game
Per 40
eFG%UsagePER
PTSREBASTBLKSTLPTSREB
2011-12
ACAA
1st
421
11.7
4.3
1.8
0.1
1.5
22.1
8.1
53.7%
20.9%
35.8
2012-13
CIS
2nd
362
6.7
2.8
1.1
0.0
1.1
14.7
6.1
50.0%
18.6%
20.4

Okay, so we have two rookies with projected PERs above 20.

Gilliss, whose last name is ripe for what they call a reverse Nicklas Grossmann*, was ACAA rookie of the year, and is one of six players listed here who will be at CCAA nationals this week.

I'm not entirely sure on the Atlantic projections (most of the players who form the baseline for these translations were Alberta-to-Canada West) and seeing that STU's opponents shot around 30% makes me wonder if we shouldn't adjust ACAA-based projections down a bit more.

* They do not call it that.




Sandre Bascoe
5-11 forward, 4th year, Algonquin College
Season
Conf
Year
Minutes
Per Game
Per 40
eFG%UsagePER
PTSREBASTBLKSTLPTSREB
2011-12
OCAA
3rd
421
16.1
9.8
2.2
0.4
4.0
24.5
14.9
50.5%
29.9%
38.6
2012-13
CIS
4th
362
7.5
5.1
1.1
0.2
2.4
16.6
11.3
47.9%
26.6%
24.5

If you're wondering, it's not a typo: both Bascoe and Gilliss played 421 minutes, and both receive the same discounting (about 14%) down to 362.

On the one hand, 24.5 is a great PER, and it's hard to ignore. On the other hand, it's almost too good, and since it's really hard to expect a player to post that number, how confident can we be in it? And for the purposes of this projection we have to assume ACAC competition is the same as OCAA. Same issue as with Atlantic players, basically.

In any case, we're still only talking about two potential years for Bascoe here, not three or four as is the case with nearly every other player on this list.




Kelly Vass
5-6 guard, 2nd year, St. Thomas University
Season
Conf
Year
Minutes
Per Game
Per 40
eFG%UsagePER
PTSREBASTBLKSTLPTSREB
2011-12
ACAA
1st
423
10.1
3.9
2.5
0.0
3.8
21.1
8.1
49.0%
26.2%
33.4
2012-13
CIS
2nd
364
6.4
2.7
1.7
0.0
3.1
14.0
6.0
46.0%
23.3%
17.3

Nothing against the remaining players on the list, but we do have a drop-off in projected PER (for what that's worth), with most of the remaining players under 18.

I am running out of insightful things to say about basketball players I don't really know, so I will merely point out that a student who started college in 2011 was probably born in 1993. You're welcome.




Kelsey Lund
6-0 forward, 2nd year, University of Alberta - Augustana
Season
Conf
Year
Minutes
Per Game
Per 40
eFG%UsagePER
PTSREBASTBLKSTLPTSREB
2011-12
ACAC
1st
424*
14.3
8.7
0.4
0.9
1.3
26.9
16.4
45.4%
31.9%
39.0
2012-13
CIS
2nd
365
8.2
5.6
0.3
0.5
1.0
18.0
12.4
43.1%
28.3%
17.2

Lund's yet another player finishing her first year; she's also the third player on this list who made the ACAC North first-team all-stars, so it's not like we're identifying complete diamonds in the rough here.

Lund grabbed about 20% of all rebounds available when she was on the floor, and is unsurprisingly projected to average about 12 boards per 40 minutes in CIS. This helps make up for the shooting percentage (second-worst among these players).




Cameo McKerlie
5-10 forward, 3rd year, Lakeland College
Season
Conf
Year
Minutes
Per Game
Per 40
eFG%UsagePER
PTSREBASTBLKSTLPTSREB
2010-11
ACAC
1st
82
5.3
4.0
0.3
0.7
1.0
15.6
11.7
34.8%
27.1%
11.0
2011-12
ACAC
2nd
403
10.6
6.2
1.5
0.4
1.4
21.0
12.3
53.9%
19.9%
33.7
2012-13
CIS
3rd
347
5.9
3.9
0.9
0.2
1.0
13.7
9.0
50.6%
17.1%
18.5

This is a good example of how different skills are affected by the jump to CIS. Fairbanks' shooting is expected to drop quite a bit since almost half her shots come from beyond the arc, but McKerlie's inside game is more likely to translate, at least scoring-wise. (She actually scored slightly more points per shot than Fairbanks.)




Ashley Bawn
5-8 guard, 4th year, St. Thomas University
Season
Conf
Year
Minutes
Per Game
Per 40
eFG%UsagePER
PTSREBASTBLKSTLPTSREB
2009-10
ACAA
1st
184*
4.3
2.4
0.6
0.2
1.7
9.3
5.2
37.1%
15.1%
n/a
2010-11
ACAA
2nd
279
11.5
5.3
2.8
0.0
2.9
16.5
7.6
37.7%
21.1%
24.6
2011-12
ACAA
3rd
560
10.2
5.6
3.3
0.0
3.2
17.7
9.7
47.7%
19.3%
35.1
2012-13
CIS
4th
434
6.1
4.0
2.3
0.0
2.6
11.3
7.3
44.7%
16.6%
19.4

Lots of Tommies here, but they were conference champions who won by 39 points on average, so you kind of expect them to have all the conference's standouts. Bawn was a first-team conference all-star, and would be higher on this list if she had more than two years left.




Rachelle Abella
5-4 guard, 3rd year, Mohawk College
Season
Conf
Year
Minutes
Per Game
Per 40
eFG%UsagePER
PTSREBASTBLKSTLPTSREB
2011-12
OCAA
2nd
560
20.2
6.1
2.7
0.0
3.7
26.0
7.9
37.7%
34.1%
36.6
2012-13
CIS
3rd
482
9.9
3.5
1.5
0.0
2.5
16.5
5.8
35.2%
30.3%
16.2

Not much to say here, not because she isn't a good player (No. 2 in scoring in the province), but because she appears to be returning to Mohawk for another year. Abella sucked up a lot of possessions last year and almost certainly wouldn't have a usage rate that high in CIS. On the other hand, her touches would go down, the number of poor shots she's forced to take will decrease, and she won't be shooting in the 30s. Again, though, it's all academic if she stays in the OCAA.




Kristen Monasterski
6-1 forward, 4th year, Grant MacEwan University
Season
Conf
Year
Minutes
Per Game
Per 40
eFG%UsagePER
PTSREBASTBLKSTLPTSREB
2009-10
ACAC
1st
242
4.9
3.4
0.2
0.2
0.5
20.3
13.9
52.3%
5.7%
n/a
2010-11
ACAC
2nd
554
11.9
6.7
0.9
0.8
0.8
20.6
11.6
54.7%
13.6%
25.4
2011-12
ACAC
3rd
522
13.8
9.6
0.8
0.6
0.7
21.1
14.7
52.5%
24.3%
30.9
2012-13
CIS
4th
449
8.0
6.1
0.5
0.3
0.5
14.2
10.9
49.7%
21.6%
14.9

Our first player who made this list in both years, Monasterski hadn't decided as of January where she'd be in '12-13, but it seemed a foregone conclusion she'd be in CIS somewhere.

Ironically, now that she's looking to transfer, her translated CIS numbers are actually worse: compared to last year, her projected effective field goal percentage is down from 53.1% to 49.7%, and her projected PER is at 14.9 rather than 18.6.

UPDATE - Mar. 28: Monasterski's going to UVic.
Next PostNewer Post Previous PostOlder Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment