What are reasonable expectations for next decade of bball?

[BYULV]

Logan Magnusson

[Gunk]

Sharp, Worthington, Austin, JT (he practically regressed), Cusick, and a whole bunch of other players. A lot of BYU players don't progress beyond their freshman and sophomore years.

Worthington has been at BYU 2 years, as a Freshman and a Sophomore. Not really fair game yet. 251 minutes, 32 points, 29 rebounds Year #1. 407 minutes, 60 points, 55 rebounds Year #2. That does show definite improvement.

Nate Austin played 450 minutes as a Freshman, playing 35 games, starting 1, scoring 143 points and grabbing 132 rebounds. Austin played 934 minutes as a Junior, playing 35 games, starting 35, scoring 132 points and grabbing 278 rebounds. He has had serious injury issues. It appears that he has sacrificed his offensive game in order to focus on defense and rebounding. Judging by his starts/minutes, that is exactly what the coaches wanted him to do.

Tavernari played 343 minutes as a Freshman. 181 points, 80 rebounds, 17 assists, 18 steals. He played 1042 minutes as a Junior. 517 points, 239 rebounds, 58 assists, 49 steals. His Senior year, he became the 1st player off of the bench, putting up similar numbers to his Sophomore year as a primary starter (that team featured Jimmer, Emery, Davies, Hartsock, Miles, Abouo, and Tyler Haws). But there's no doubt that his overall numbers improved dramatically the longer he was at BYU.

Cusick also only played 2 years at BYU. As a Junior, he played 588 minutes, scoring 110 points and grabbing 52 rebounds. As a Senior, he played 689 minutes, scoring 137 points and grabbing 82 rebounds. Again, improvement.

There are plenty of names that don't stand out much to BYU fans, like Logan Magnusson. But going back and looking at the numbers, even guys like that did improve quite a bit.

Mars, I think you need to look at shooting percentages and production/minute to get a truer sense of how much a player has improved. If a player that shoots 45% gets more minutes, of course they are going to score more points. Doesn't mean they improved as a shooter.

Furthermore, if a player develops a new skill or improves in an area, why wouldn’t the coaches leverage that skill? If Austin suddenly developed a reliable back to the basket repertoire, of course the coaches would game-plan for it. At the very least, you’d think Austin would want to show it off a bit. Never happened.

I don’t have time for a production/minute comparison but here are shooting percentages over the course of these players’ careers.

JT:
FG% - 47%; 39%; 43%; and 41%.
3P% - 37%; 37%; 38%; and 39%
JT basically shot the ball worse as his career progressed. His 3P% remains fairly consistent through his career. He did not improve significantly as a player. There was a lot of talk around him as a freshman because he put up some decent numbers for a freshman but then proceeded to stall.

Cusick:
FG% - 37%; and 38%
3P% - 37%; and 40%
I suppose you could make a case for Cusick improving his three-point shot, but that’s really it. His overall shooting percentage is pretty much the same despite getting more min. No significant improvement.

Worthington:
FG% - 46%; and 46%
Worthington improved on the defensive end, no question. I don’t want to take that away from him. His offensive game didn’t go anywhere and for a guy with a full year more under his belt he got beat out for the starting role by a guy just off his mission that hadn’t played ball in three years. I don’t know how anyone could argue Worthington came back a significantly improved player after his freshman year, especially since that’s typically were we see the biggest jump.

Sharp:
FG% - 39%; 57%; 63%; and 57%
I admit, looking at those numbers you’d think Sharp significantly improved. However, when you see he averaged less than a shot a game his entire career the picture becomes clearer. If he really got better, why not more shots and more minutes? Essentially, Sharp got better at making that one shot. No added skill set. Nothing new or really different from him. Same old…

Austin:
FG% - 54%; 47%; 54%; and 50%
Again, nothing really changed with Austin from shooting percentage. He seemed to take fewer and fewer shots over his career. I’m sure Rose told him to focus on securing the paint and grabbing boards. But why? Probably because he never developed any inside moves and we already have a team full of guards that can shoot from the outside – not much need for a “stretch” 4. Again, you can’t really say Austin showed significant improvement over the course of his career.

I bet if you were look at these players production compared to the minutes per game they played we wouldn’t see much if any improvement.