Who is the best player on the Gophers roster so far this season?

Who is the best player on the Gophers roster so far this season?

  • DeAndre Mathieu

    Votes: 1 1.7%

  • Andre Hollins

    Votes: 18 30.5%

  • Carlos Morris

    Votes: 3 5.1%

  • Joey King

    Votes: 3 5.1%

  • Mo Walker

    Votes: 17 28.8%

  • Nate Mason

    Votes: 15 25.4%

  • Other

    Votes: 2 3.4%
  • Total voters
    59
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mcal24

mcal24

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Kind of hard to choose as almost everyone has had ups and downs this season. What do you think?
 


mcal24 said:
Kind of hard to choose as almost everyone has had ups and downs this season. What do you think?
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Player efficiency rating (a/k/a PER) is a composite rating commonly used to grade players on their combination (good and bad) of box score numbers. The rating is adjusted by minutes so players playing few minutes can actually have pretty high PER ratings and those playing lots of minutes can have low ones. Of course the rating can't accommodate things not in box scores so it routinely underrates defensive specialists. I don't think there is really a defensive specialist on this team other than possibly Elliot, so that deficiency of the rating probably doesn't have a huge impact on assessing the relative contributions of the members. The PER ratings of the rotational players on this team are listed below:

Walker: 29
Mason: 22.1
Morris: 20.8
Eliason: 19.2 (a bit surprising)
Mathieu: 18.4
Hollins: 16.6
Buggs: 13.7
King: 12.6
Konate: 12.5

Scores above 20 are quite good. Hollins' score would probably be considered to be Average + and King's would be slightly below average. To put Walker's score in perspective, Frank Kaminsky leads both the conference AND the nation with a score of 35. Walker's score is quite impressive, so I would have to say that Walker has been the best player on the team this year.

Of course, Mathieu and Mason are the straws that stir the drink but their scores are good too. Elliot's relatively high score can probably be explained by his high field goal percentage, his good rebound percentage, his good block percentage, and his relatively low turnover rate.
 

cjbfbp said:
Player efficiency rating (a/k/a PER) is a composite rating commonly used to grade players on their combination (good and bad) of box score numbers. The rating is adjusted by minutes so players playing few minutes can actually have pretty high PER ratings and those playing lots of minutes can have low ones. Of course the rating can't accommodate things not in box scores so it routinely underrates defensive specialists. I don't think there is really a defensive specialist on this team other than possibly Elliot, so that deficiency of the rating probably doesn't have a huge impact on assessing the relative contributions of the members. The PER ratings of the rotational players on this team are listed below:

Walker: 29
Mason: 22.1
Morris: 20.8
Eliason: 19.2 (a bit surprising)
Mathieu: 18.4
Hollins: 16.6
Buggs: 13.7
King: 12.6
Konate: 12.5

Scores above 20 are quite good. Hollins' score would probably be considered to be Average + and King's would be slightly below average. To put Walker's score in perspective, Frank Kaminsky leads both the conference AND the nation with a score of 35. Walker's score is quite impressive, so I would have to say that Walker has been the best player on the team this year.

Of course, Mathieu and Mason are the straws that stir the drink but their scores are good too. Elliot's relatively high score can probably be explained by his high field goal percentage, his good rebound percentage, his good block percentage, and his relatively low turnover rate.
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Thanks a lot for this. I knew Mo had been playing well, but this is surprising to me. If you look at just offense though, which it sounds like this stat is weighted toward offense, it makes more sense. This team is so weird because it seems like you could make a case for 6 different guys to be our best player.
 

Nate Dog

I'd have to say Nate Mason has been the most consistent best player. Meaning i have him as having played in the top 3 on the team in a majority of games this year.


mcal24 said:
Thanks a lot for this. I knew Mo had been playing well, but this is surprising to me. If you look at just offense though, which it sounds like this stat is weighted toward offense, it makes more sense. This team is so weird because it seems like you could make a case for 6 different guys to be our best player.
Click to expand...
 


mcal24 said:
Thanks a lot for this. I knew Mo had been playing well, but this is surprising to me. If you look at just offense though, which it sounds like this stat is weighted toward offense, it makes more sense. This team is so weird because it seems like you could make a case for 6 different guys to be our best player.
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You're welcome! You're right. The measure is weighted toward offense, but it does include some defensive statistics like steals, defensive rebounds, and blocks that appear in the box score. Of course, it also doesn't include some other team oriented contributions (offensive and defensive) like screening and boxing out.

The link to the Gophers' stat page is shown below. Scroll down to Advanced stats. One thing to notice is that the Gophers have pretty impressive True Shooting Percentages (TS%) as a team. This number takes into account field goal percentage, 3 point percentage, and free throw percentage and weights them accordingly. The higher the score, the more the player is maximizing points per shot taken. Each field goal attempt (2 or 3) counts as one shot taken and each free throw attempt counts for slightly less than half a shot taken.

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/minnesota/2015.html
 

cjbfbp said:
You're welcome! You're right. The measure is weighted toward offense, but it does include some defensive statistics like steals, defensive rebounds, and blocks that appear in the box score. Of course, it also doesn't include some other team oriented contributions (offensive and defensive) like screening and boxing out.

The link to the Gophers' stat page is shown below. Scroll down to Advanced stats. One thing to notice is that the Gophers have pretty impressive True Shooting Percentages (TS%) as a team. This number takes into account field goal percentage, 3 point percentage, and free throw percentage and weights them accordingly. The higher the score, the more the player is maximizing points per shot taken. Each field goal (2 or 3) counts as one shot taken and each free throw attempt counts for slightly less than half a shot.

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/minnesota/2015.html
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Here's a really cool stat site I look at a lot for college bball. Has a bunch of cool stats and charts.

http://statsheet.com/mcb/teams/minnesota
 


No one is deserving. We have nobody who plays with a chip on his shoulder. We have an entire team of pretty boys who have treated their opponents as if they are their girlfriends. :p
 



tinyarch said:
No one is deserving. We have nobody who plays with a chip on his shoulder. We have an entire team of pretty boys who have treated their opponents as if they are their girlfriends. :p
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You're married. You have no right to talk about girlfriends. Unless...
 


GameDay said:
Kendall Shell. I'm serious.
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Sounds like he's a great kid. He epitomizes the fantastic kids that play on the team, yet are almost too nice on the court. I'd also pick Kendall Shell for the best trumpet player on the pep band...
 




I take that back.

In all honesty, he's still probably our best player considering the entire year, but boy did he lay a dud tonight.
 

Maybe I should add an option for Kendall Shell
 

Carlos Morris is the most talented offensive player by far. The coaches need to tell him to start games with those sweet slashing drives to the hole. He'll score, get fouled or may a nice little pass to a big - it's our only viable offensive play! But somehow the coaches let him start games throwing up bombs before he's got any rhythm. I don't think this staff is even close to average.
 

TheMetroTheFaust said:
Carlos Morris is the most talented offensive player by far. The coaches need to tell him to start games with those sweet slashing drives to the hole. He'll score, get fouled or may a nice little pass to a big - it's our only viable offensive play! But somehow the coaches let him start games throwing up bombs before he's got any rhythm. I don't think this staff is even close to average.
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It would be hilarious if any coach told a player during a team meeting when going over the game plan to just "make sure you start the game with those sweet slashing drives to the hole." If coaching was that easy everyone would do it.
 

I went with Mason, I think Morris is a very close 2nd. (So I think Pitino's recruiting is going reasonably well, so far)

Hollins should & could be the best moving forward if he can improve his consistency and become a true senior leader we all expect(ed) from him.

I cant say Mo simply because he doesn't rebound well enough for my standards of a Big10 center.
 

Morris is not a 3pt shooter, his feet are pointed 25 degrees away from perpendicular. Not saying he shouldn't put one up on a good pass inside out but he should never put up more than 5 a game. He is easily the best driver finisher we have and that should be his bread and butter. In the big ten he is 8 for 28 28% on 3's. On two's he is at 45%. He would be a pretty good sg on a team had we better options at pf and sf.
 

Surprised to see so many votes for Mo. His weak wristed turnovers, soft rebounding, delicate approach to defense, failure to box out, fear of setting hard screens, etc. barely put him in my top-5. If it was just for offensive threat, he's worth some votes, but as our best overall player? No wonder we're winless in the B1G.

I voted Mason, btw. He's strong on both ends of the court.
 

Costa Rican Gopher said:
Surprised to see so many votes for Mo. His weak wristed turnovers, soft rebounding, delicate approach to defense, failure to box out, fear of setting hard screens, etc. barely put him in my top-5. If it was just for offensive threat, he's worth some votes, but as our best overall player? No wonder we're winless in the B1G.

I voted Mason, btw. He's strong on both ends of the court.
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I don't think there is a clear cut favorite. Last year I clearly would have voted for DeAndre and Austin over all of the others. I voted for Mo because a widely accepted, objective, and comparative measure supported that decision. I do admit that last night's game makes me regret that. Watching him may make a lot of us groan at times but he's obviously done a lot of things right this year or he would not have a PER score of 29 going into last night's game.
 

Outside of the choking, this poll gets at the second biggest story of the season. A couple different websites listed Andre Hollins as a top 100 (or something like that) college basketball player (not pro prospect) coming in to this year. I thought Andre was overrated and thought he'd have a hard time living up to that billing, but I thought not enough credit was being given to DeAndre Mathieu. I thought lil Dre had a good shot to be a very good PG in his Senior season and combine with Andre to give the Gophers a strong backcourt. I was unfortunately right about Andre (though never would have guessed he would struggle this badly) and wrong about DeAndre to the point where he's now coming off the bench! I know Eliason's stats don't show it, but he's the third guy who is giving us a lot less than expected based on prior performance this season. Eliason hasn't blocked a shot since the B1G opener...let that sink in for a guy who averaged 1.9 blocks a game as a Junior. I thought we'd get more of the Elliott we saw early in conference play last year and less of the Elliott we've seen for almost this entire year.

I agree with those that say it's tough to vote for Mo in this poll due to both his defense and his turnovers. At times his shooting numbers make him appear to be efficient in the post, but he turns it over a number of times prior to getting a shot up too. I could maybe get on board with giving the "award" to Nate Mason as best player, but it feels like we are grading him on a curve based on him being a freshman. Nate's shot the ball at a 30(!) percent clip or worse in 4 of his 7 B1G games and his missed free throws were huge in the losses to Ohio State and Iowa.

We don't have a single player who is worthy of "best" player. It's unrealistic to expect anyone to be good in every game, but we don't have one guy on the roster who you could say really played well in say 5 of 7 conference games.
 

Costa Rican Gopher said:
Surprised to see so many votes for Mo. His weak wristed turnovers, soft rebounding, delicate approach to defense, failure to box out, fear of setting hard screens, etc. barely put him in my top-5. If it was just for offensive threat, he's worth some votes, but as our best overall player? No wonder we're winless in the B1G.

I voted Mason, btw. He's strong on both ends of the court.
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The truth is that no one on this team is great. We're voting for the best mediocre player.
 

i think based on crunch time and against good competion its gotta be mason....would be interesting to see the per numbers eliminating the cupcake games
 


Not even close. Andre for sure. Mo has been a pleasant surprise on offense but his lack of rebounding is a huge issue. Biggest disappointment has to be Mathieu.
 

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