Tag: Bench

Comparing M.J. Rice to Other Wings as Freshmen

After losses, questions from the KU fanbase arise. Players buried on the bench seem like a possible rescue for the current challenges the team is facing.

M.J. Rice came in as one of KU’s more highly-touted players. As an athletic wing with a strong ranking and build, he was expected to produce and maybe even start this season. There have been numerous freshmen wings to start in the Self-era. Brandon Rush, Xavier Henry, Ben McLemore, Andrew Wiggins, Wayne Selden, Kelly Oubre, Josh Jackson, Quentin Grimes, and, (even this season) Gradey Dick to name a few. Further names of freshmen wings to get quality playing time (and a few starts along the way) include Josh Selby, Svi Mykhailiuk, Marcus Garrett, Ochai Agbaji, and Christian Braun. While some of these guys came in more highly-touted (and proved to be legitimate pro-prospects), others were not better recruits. Based on incoming hype alone, he is somewhere in the middle of these names.

Injuries, illnesses, and inconsistency have held him back. He’s had 4 straight DNP’s, played under than 5 minutes all conference season, and hasn’t played a noticeable amount of time in any game since Harvard. For the season he has appeared in 11 games, but he has shown flashes of skill.

Against Texas Southern, a game in which an injured Kevin McCullar did not appear, Rice logged a season-high 21.5 minutes. He scored 19 points on efficient shooting. He graded out as KU’s second-best player that night, producing an above-bubble value-score of +7.05. This is the best single performance of any KU bench-player this season, and even scored better than K.J. Adams’ best game.

Aside from this game, he’s been less-than-stellar. Of the other 10 he’s appeared in, only against Harvard has he produced positive value. And while the value-score is opponent-adjusted, it should be noted that his worst games have came against the best competition as he has produced -16.83 points of value in 39.5 minutes against Power 6 foes. He hasn’t proven he can perform against top-tier quality, and since that is all that is left on KU’s schedule, one can understand why he isn’t currently in the rotation.

Still, its not like KU has a wide range of wings on its bench. The team effectively starts 4 wings alongside PG Dejuan Harris (for this exercise I’ll use the term “wing” to refer to players who are primarily non-post scorers, who will shoot at least an occasional 3, yet are not a primary ball-handling type. Defensively, wings are better perimeter defenders, which differentiates them from post-men). KU’s bench, on the other hand, has 2 small PG/CG-types (Pettiford, Yesufu) and 4 “bigs” or “5-men” (Ejiofor, Clemence, Udeh, Martin). None of these would traditionally be considered wings, although each of these six players has unique skill sets from one another. The only other bench player that could be considered a wing is Kyle Cuffe, who has been injured since the second game and thus not relevant to our current discussion.

The point is, this team starts all of the wings it plays. While the team has had success doing so, when it goes to the bench, the makeup of the lineup changes. When Pettiford and/or Yesufu come in, KU will play 2 (or 3) PG/CG types. Smaller, quicker, and with better ball-handling, these players give up size and are better scorers in the full-court rather than half-court. Defensively, these smaller guards tend to have trouble rebounding and contesting against the shots of taller opponents.

Whenever a backup 5 replaces Adams (namely Ejiofor or Clemence recently), KU loses an excellent wing defender (Adams) and gains a better rebounder who has trouble switching onto the opponents’ best guards and wings. The point is, KU is best suited to play its starting 5. Not only is the team better, the defensive strategy (liberal amounts of switches) is best suited for guys who are mobile and range from 6’6 – 6’8. Additionally, the offensive strategy of playing a spaced-out high-ball-screen system, utilizing a 5-man who can handle it well, doesn’t work as well with a substitute 5 who cannot handle it or an off-guard who isn’t able to make jump shots.

Rice’s skillset fits in nicely with what the team’s strategy is. Having him spell Kevin McCullar means you don’t give up any size at the off-guard position. Switching most screens still makes sense. Having him fill in for a Gradey Dick or Jalen Wilson means you have someone who has clear offensive potential…someone who can score. Playing alongside a Harris means he will get good looks.

One suggestion is that he would perform better if he could get into a rhythm. His semi-recent spot minutes have not been impressive, to be sure. But when he did play extended runs, such as his 18 minutes against NDSU or 21 against TSU, he scored 10 and 19 points.

Below is a table of KU wings in their freshmen years. What we want to do is compare Rice to these other names through about the same point in the season. As Rice has played 96 minutes, we will attempt to break-down these other freshmen wings at this point in their careers in terms of minutes played. It won’t be perfect, but we should be able to get value-scores of other wings.

The filter was to count the first 100 minutes of a player’s freshman season, with the difference being that we are counting whole-games worth of statistical value. The percentage of minutes show a variety of playing time by individual, with Ben McLemore playing the most of anyone. The PPG_AB and Per100 in gray show how well that player was doing through his first 100 minutes of court time. The last two blue columns show that player’s entire season.

The player who got off to the best start was Andrew Wiggins, and generally players who got off to good starts continued that momentum, albeit it with reversion to the mean. There were a few notable players who improved after sluggish starts, with Kelly Oubre and Josh Jackson being notables. Ochai Agbaji, although he showed potential, was a negative-value player when he first burned the redshirt. However, immediately following his first 112 minutes in 6 games played, he had his best outing against Texas. Thus, perhaps his development is overstated here. Conversely, Kelly Oubre’s slow start is somewhat masked by the fact his final game in the sequence was his best to that point. He hardly played at first, but slowly became a very solid player. His development throughout the course of the season was significant.

Where does this leave us with M.J.? Through roughly 100 minutes played, he is behind each of these names in terms of minutes played and per-possession value. On total value, his closest comps for the whole season are Grimes and Svi, neither of whom were any good in their freshman campaigns.  In terms of minutes played, he is getting similar time as Braun or Oubre did. Both of these improved to become positive-value players, indicating that there is still hope for a turnaround. But perhaps his closest comps are players not on this list. Wings that primarily sat as freshmen; players such as Travis Releford, Lagerald Vick, Brannen Greene, Andrew White, or Tristan Enaruna.

The biggest debate about M.J is one that is unanswerable. We don’t know how he’s doing in practice, and speculation about him being better than the team’s current crop of reserves is just that. When he’s played well, he’s certainly shown a dimension that guys like Pettiford or Yesufu don’t have, namely one that fits in well on the wing (BP and JY should still get minutes, especially when Harris needs a break). But when he’s been bad, well, it could cost you a game in an ultra-competitive Big 12.

More on the Bench

While KU continues to win close games, it is in spite of its bench players. This phenomenon was discussed earlier in the season, and the discrepancy between its starters and bench has remained. Self has continued to play Bobby Pettiford and Joseph Yesufu as reserve guards, with an oft-injured M.J. Rice having not playing in the last three games. Zuby Ejiofor has been KU’s most-frequently-used bench big man in conference play (27 minutes), followed by Zach Clemence (21 minutes) and Cam Martin (6 minutes). Ernest Udeh has played in only 1 second of conference play. Yes, just 1 second. This came at the end of the Oklahoma State game when he was guarding the inbounds pass.

Since the last time we examined their performance, the KU bench has hardly changed in overall value it provides. After 10 games, the bench was positioned to earn about -3.00 WAR over a normalized 36-game schedule. With 17 games in the book, this has hardly budged. The 2023 bench is still the worst bench in the 20-year Self-era, and with no signs of improvement would be only the 6th bench to produce negative-WAR value over that time span.

One thing to consider is that there is a sort of floor to this number. The worse the bench plays, the less Self will go to it. Through 5 conference games, the starters have averaged 32.5 minutes per game each. This is Self maxing out starter-minutes. He cannot play them much more, considering foul trouble will occur at times and fatigue will set in. With limited bench minutes, two things should keep the number somewhat afloat. First, the bench has less collective time on the floor to perform poorly. Second, in limited minutes the bench players should have the energy to play each defensive possession 100%. The bench should be giving maximum effort when they are out there, thus maximizing their potential value on a possession basis.

There are various ways to quantify the dreadfulness of the bench rotation. We have used the WAR value metric to compare the 2023 bench to others in the Self-era. Now we will compare the 2023 starters – Harris, McCullar, Dick, Wilson, and Adams – to the remainder of the team using Adj. Points AB +/-. This metric compares a player’s value, in points relative to a bubble-level opponent (about the 45th best team in D-1). Anything positive is quite good and should earn the player rotation minutes, with anything greater than +2.00 indicating a performance level that would start on almost any KU team.

The following numbers are thus presented per game, collectively divided between starters and bench.

The starting 5 produces an average difference of 13.16 points above a bubble team per game. They have been tremendous. This year’s starters have collectively out-done last season’s starting 5, which were +10.83 points above bubble per game. For the Missouri game, the starters were an absurd +39.84. They have only been below bubble-level as a group twice this season, first against Omaha (which was technically their worst opponent-adjusted performance) and second against Tennessee. Even then, these games were barely below the 0 threshold.

In contrast, the bench has played to a bubble-standard in only four games (23.5% of games). Ironically, its best game was against Omaha with a +5.02 performance, which is also the only time it has outperformed the starting 5. Its worst outing was against Southern Utah, in a game that was only close because of the reserves. Worse, the bench is trending downward. It hasn’t produced a positive outing since the Indiana game. Last season, on a team that featured seniors like Mitch Lightfoot, Jalen Coleman-Lands, and of course Remy Martin off the bench; it was collectively -0.52 and produced 17 games above bubble-standard (42.5%). This number was much higher at the end of the season when it counted, as the bench collectively produced an average game of +5.53 in the 9 games that made up the 2 tournaments. This was due to the great play of Remy, as well as a shortened rotation that played the senior reserves far more than the underclass backups. Suffice to say, the 2023 team doesn’t currently have that kind of fire-power waiting in the wings. It has underclassmen and transfers, none of whom have proven any capacity to be consistently great at the upper echelons of the D1 level.

Having a poor bench is no reason to despair. History has shown that teams with great starters can win in the Tournament despite having little help from its reserves. The 2012 runners-up had a very similar divide between a strong starting 5 and weak bench. However, even the 2012 bench had experience; Kevin Young was a redshirt junior and Conner Teahan a fifth-year senior. The 2016 team is another good comparison. It earned the number-one overall seed and made an Elite 8 on the backs of its experienced starters, getting little from its bench.

There are a few potential bright spots to consider when pondering the bench situation. First, is that KU has talented young players on its roster. It really only takes the development of one or two of the following by March for this situation to drastically improve: Pettiford, Yesufu, Rice, Ejiofor, Udeh, Clemence. If KU can comfortably play any of these guys 10 minutes or so and expect a consistent performance, it can better maintain leads that its starting 5 works to build. The second consideration doesn’t have to do with the bench, but with the makeup of the starting 5. The starters are all capable of playing a heavy-load, thus reducing the negative-impact the bench has collectively brought. K.J. Adams is far more like a wing than a post in terms of fitness and durability, meaning that even the 5-spot needs fewer bench minutes this season than it historically does.

Lastly, where should the team go from here? In comparing Per 100 points above bubble, there is good reason to like the potential development of Udeh and Ejiofor. These two have clearly been superior to other bench-players, particularly the other 5 men. While Ejiofor has gotten in games consistently, Udeh has been relegated to DNPs of late. Perhaps this should be reexamined, particularly if Clemence continues to defend at a poor level.

There hasn’t been much value from the reserve guards/wings. Injuries have plagued all four (with Cuffe still out), and even when healthy none have provided consistent value. The team loses scoring ability, size, and defensive skill when it goes to the bench and gains little. Shifting K.J. down to the 4 when Jalen is out is honestly a worthy consideration.