“Starters” reflects the Top 5 players on the team in minutes played. Due to injuries, rotation patterns, and so on; what constitutes a starter might differ from team-to-team. The term “crunch-time five” might also apply. These numbers are in Points Above Bubble through 1/29/23:
Kansas leads the league with a top five which is collectively 12.41 points above bubble per game. There is a large gap until you get to the rest of the pack. The list is in alphabetical order.
The bench refers to the rest of the roster combined. Walk-ons are included, but their numbers are negligible. This shows the collective points against bubble of the reserves in a per game ratio:
The best bench is Texas’ bench, which is slightly above bubble-level. Iowa State and Oklahoma State are also above-bubble. As you can see, Kansas’ bench is by far the lowest. The below chart graphs this out, putting the starters on the X-Axis and bench on the Y-Axis. To the right and up is where you want your team to be. See if you can tell which button Kansas is represented by:
A Per32 look is also instructive. First, look at the average starter for each team in a 32 minute span. This will be a good estimate of how much value a certain team’s average starter can provide if playing a decent load of minutes.
Now the same thing, just with the bench.
KU’s starters are clearly the class of the league, but its reserves are so far behind it almost boggles the mind. KU’s bench isn’t just bad, it’s also the most noticeable unit in this exercise. Any bubble-level player from past seasons, such as a freshman Christian Braun or a sophomore Landen Lucas or a junior Naadir Tharpe, would make this team 2 to 3 points better per game. KU can only make this work as good as it has because it plays its starters the bulk of available minutes (77.4%, leads the conference). If it lost anyone of its starting 5 for a decent amount of time, it would get noticeably worse.
One more note about the Kansas starters. If you removed Jalen Wilson, the other four starters would still produce an above-bubble value which is above 6.00 points per game. That group would still be 5th in the conference among starting 5’s, but very close to the other 4 teams and under 1.00 point per game below the new first-place team. With Jalen, its not even close who has the best starting 5. Effectively, Jalen’s excellent season is mostly being washed away by the team’s poor bench.
Charting the Hawks 