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Why My First Child Will Be Named Dinwiddie

Goose

Goose

Hoops Moderator
Club Member
Junta Member
After throwing a wet blanket on people's hopes yesterday with my analysis of what we can expect from Josh Scott, I figured it was time to add a little optimism and kool aid to the brew. To do that, I thought of no better place to look than with The Mayor - Spencer Dinwiddie. Anyone who knows me knows that I love PG's, and even more I love big PG's who can cause match-up problems on the floor. Shaun Livingston with the LA Clippers will always be one of my favorite players -- even if his exploits have become a bit exaggerated in my mind (although I still maintain that I did actually see him kill a crocodile with his bare hands once). The Mayor fits that role perfectly.

When I went up to see practice this summer, I was impressed by Dinwiddie. Not only did he look bigger & stronger, but he looked a lot more confident and under control out there. You get the feeling while it's Dre's ball (copyright Snow 2012), it's going to be The Mayor's team. As a freshman, he couldn't really do more than lead by example. This year, I think he's ready to all out lead. It wouldn't surprise me to see him not only become the floor general the team needs, but also the go to guy in the clutch for when the team needs an easy basket. The one defining moment of the practice I was at was when he was trapped in the corner by a double team, somehow escaped baseline and was able to dunk it. It was a thing of beauty, and a thing that Buff fans should get ready to see more of this year.

As with Scott, I asked on Twitter yesterday to see what everyone was thinking, and there was a general consensus. Most people are expecting the Mayor to put up 13 points, 4 rebounds and 4 assists a game -- all improvements on his freshman year totals of 10.0, 3.6 and 1.8. Now this analysis is yet another stat nerd comparison that will probably cause JG to shake his head as it is in no way scientific and probably has many flaws, but it was a fun little exercise for me to see what we can expect this season. What I did is I went to The Mayor's KenPom page and looked at his comparable players. They were:


Now right off of the bat I'm going to remove Greene. Nothing personal against him, but if I'm using the comparables as precident, it's hard to see anything when someone is in the same class as The Mayor. So that reduces my sample size by one. What I did is I took some basic stats from each of the players and found out how their numbers improved in between their freshmen and sophomore seasons. For this discussion, the most important numbers I looked at were points per game, rebounds per game and assists per game. However, I also wanted to see some "higher level" numbers, so I also looked at %Minutes, O-Rating, %Possession, %Shots, Assist Rate & TO Rate.

In general, the numbers broke down like so for their sophomore year as compared to their freshman year:

Stat | PPG | RPG | APG | %Min | ORtg | %Poss | %Shots | ARate | TORate Improvement |143%|111%|147%|120%|98%|127%|127%|131%|92%

You'll notice that all of the stats improved in between their freshman and sophomore years except for their Offensive Rating. Now this makes sense because each of these guys had more of a burden placed upon them in their second year, so it makes sense that they're less efficient. You will notice that the efficiency rate is a minimal drop however, where as most of hte other stats (specifically PPG & APG) jumped up quite a bit.

So if we use those numbers, what can we expect to see the Mayor put up this upcoming season?

| PPG | RPG | APG | %Min | ORtg | %Poss | %Shots | ARate | TORate Freshman |10.0|3.6|1.8|68.4|111.0|19.4|19.2|13.6|15.8
Sophomore (Proj.) |14.3|4.0|2.7|82.1|108.9|24.6|24.4|17.9|14.6

Now that's purely by the numbers. There are many faults to go along with how I came up with these numbers, so they're just a guideline. But along with that, I would like to do a little tweaking of my own. First off, last season The Mayor was forced to spend a lot of his time at off-guard, and he didn't have the ball in his hands as much as he was used to. That's changing this year. The assists per game are low - period. He's going to be setting people up more. Honestly, I think it's reasonable to expect that he could be putting up 4 or 5 a game. I'm going to go with four to play it safe - mainly because our offensive style involves lots of ballhandlers. His rebounds are probably a touch high. Once again, due to the new position, that needs to be tweaked. When you add in the fact that we gained three ball hungry rebounders this off-season (Josh Scott, Wesley Gordon and Xavier Johnson) and have arguably the best rebounder in college basketball, you're going to lose some opportunities. I'm knocking that one down to 3 rebounds a game. Finally though, we have points. With him back at the point in his comfort level, I think it's going to make him a better scorer as well. 'Nik has said all along that he sees Dinwiddie as a player who will set his teammates up all game to get them going and then when push comes to shove, he's going to take over and force his will on his opponents.

So with that, I think it's reasonable to think that The Mayor will put up 15 points, 4 assists and 3 rebounds a game next season -- good enough to get him some All-Pac-12 love (probably second team) and get more and more people realizing that he's one of the better young PG's in the game today.

Oh, and one final note -- last year Austin Rivers was the 10th pick in the NBA Draft as a 6'5" combo guard. He scored 15.5 points, grabbed 3.4 rebounds and had 2.1 assists a game. I think the odds of The Mayor getting to celebrate senior night in Boulder are getting slim.
 
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Once again this is just ridiculous. This is going to be the Mayor's show this year and with the only other real PG's on the roster being true freshman, he should have the ball in his hands a good majority of the time.

A couple of my thoughts -

Rebounds - If he averages over two a game I will be surprised, this isn't because he can't rebound, but there is just no reason for him to be. This team is going to have to push the pace, so on defense as soon as a shot goes up he will be looking to leak out and get an outlet pass to start the break. On offense he will be the guy getting back as soon as a shot goes up, I see his only rebounds coming on long misses that come directly to him.
My projection - 2

Assists - CU didn't have many assists last year, they averaged assists on 50.4% of their FG's, 253rd in college bball (not good). A lot of this had to due with Nate, he didn't push the pace on the break that often which can lead to easy buckets and assists nor was it in his game to have dribble drive penetration on offense making guys collapse on him leading to easy buckets for the bigs. That just wasn't Nate's game, that has the potential to be the Mayor's. He is athletic and can lead, dish and finish in transition and can take guys to the hoop in the half court set.
My projection - 5 (with overall team assists up)

Points - He struggled to finish around the rim last year shooting 52% at the rim (second lowest among the main contributors, Ski was the worst at 47%). I expect that to get better as he is used to the bigger competition and he put on some weight and learns how to make room for himself. But if he pushes the ball in transition, drives to the hoop and continues to shoots in the mid 40's % from 3 and shoots FT's like he did last year (81.6%) he should be able to get to 15 points a game.
My projection - 15
 
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I am down closer to where Goose has him on points I think he's in the 13-14 range across the board i think we'll see Spencer around 13.5 a game, with 2.5 boards and give or take 5 assists. The crux of all of this though is minutes played, as Goose pointed out above all of the guys he's comparing The Mayor to had to carry the offensive load for their teams, Spencer wont for us. He'll get 13-15 a night from Dre and another 10+ from Ski. That means his usage but also him minutes played might not levels Goose is using for his assumptions above.
 
I just looked it up no one on the team played more than 75.5% of the teams minutes last year - so Spencer rising to the 82%+ used for the numbers above isnt happening.
 
absinthe said:
I just looked it up no one on the team played more than 75.5% of the teams minutes last year - so Spencer rising to the 82%+ used for the numbers above isnt happening.
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I think that 82% of the mins is high, nobody has played 80% of the minutes on a Tad Boyle coached team. The highest % of minutes any player under Tad has played (CU & UNC included) was Will Figures at UNC playing 79.8% in 2010 and Higgins second playing 79.6% in 2011.

That being said it all depends on the rotations. Is Tad going to play "units or shifts" again? The only PG's on this roster are Dinwiddie, Eli and Talton (who will probably red shirt). So essentially 2 PG's, how long of leash is Eli going to have? Dinwiddie could be in store for a lot of playing time.
 
I have nothing smart to add, but its crazy that he is only going to be a sophomore. For what ever reason I thought this was already his Junior season (and I think that is a compliment).
 
So using the analysis for Dre, Scott, and Dinwidde, seems like we are going to blow every team away by 30+ points, and the other team will never get a rebound ever.

I agree that the player we are talking about are going to have a good year, and will be very impressive, I dont think it will show up too much in the individual stat line. There is just too much talent going around compared to what we have had previously. Hopefuly, they will all gel with eachother (which normally means less impressive indiviaual stats, and better team stats)
 
GoBuffs!! said:
So using the analysis for Dre, Scott, and Dinwidde, seems like we are going to blow every team away by 30+ points, and the other team will never get a rebound ever.
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It's preseason.. What are we supposed to do? Watch football?
 
GoBuffs!! said:
So using the analysis for Dre, Scott, and Dinwidde, seems like we are going to blow every team away by 30+ points, and the other team will never get a rebound ever.
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Not sure if this is directed at me or not. Honestly, of the three I've projected (on Twitter, I posted that I thought Dre would be good for 14 & 11 this year after 11 & 11 last year), they would come in at 37 points and 20 rebounds a game between them. Rebounds might be a little high, but last year Dre, The Mayor & Carlon combined to put up 34.2 points and 18.5 rebounds a game. That's only a 2.8 point and 1.5 rebound improvement for what you could consider our top three players. Hardly unreasonable.
 
Goose said:
Not sure if this is directed at me or not. Honestly, of the three I've projected (on Twitter, I posted that I thought Dre would be good for 14 & 11 this year after 11 & 11 last year), they would come in at 37 points and 20 rebounds a game between them. Rebounds might be a little high, but last year Dre, The Mayor & Carlon combined to put up 34.2 points and 18.5 rebounds a game. That's only a 2.8 point and 1.5 rebound improvement for what you could consider our top three players. Hardly unreasonable.
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Gooseslapped!
 
OK, first, let me say I'm not the most metric-savvy fan out there, so there may be some problems with assist/turnover ratio as a statistic that I don't know about. But that said, we ranked 9th in the pac in assist/turnover ratio at 0.90. Do you guys expect that to change with the mayor running the show? I might add that in terms of taking care of the ball, ski should probably be thrown in to the discussion. I think he had the second-most turnovers on the team behind Carlon.
 
Goose said:
Not sure if this is directed at me or not. Honestly, of the three I've projected (on Twitter, I posted that I thought Dre would be good for 14 & 11 this year after 11 & 11 last year), they would come in at 37 points and 20 rebounds a game between them. Rebounds might be a little high, but last year Dre, The Mayor & Carlon combined to put up 34.2 points and 18.5 rebounds a game. That's only a 2.8 point and 1.5 rebound improvement for what you could consider our top three players. Hardly unreasonable.
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Wasnt directed towards anyone, I was just saying that everyone has been saying how much more production everyone is going to be getting, with the increased talent, the stats will hopefuly be spread out more. For example, I think Roby and Higgins's numbers were inflated because they were on sub-par teams and carried a lot more of the load, where now I think the freshman will be providing a lot more than we are expecting providing a lot more threats. As well like someone mentioned before, Tad seems to like to play a large amount of players, diluting the pool even more.

Overall, I am basically drinking the kool-aid thinking this team is going to be a lot better than any of the teams we have witnessed resulting in everyone getting moderate stats, leading into very good team stats.

Should have also said before, that is based on people's talk of Gordon, Jenkins and Johnson's production being high, as well as having players like Adams, chen, Booker, SHT steping up from previous years. I really think we will be seeing the guys at the bottom of the rotation being quality guys that in previous years would be solid contributers.

I really cannot wait till Friday to see a little more than stats and youtube videos
 
PuebloBuff said:
OK, first, let me say I'm not the most metric-savvy fan out there, so there may be some problems with assist/turnover ratio as a statistic that I don't know about. But that said, we ranked 9th in the pac in assist/turnover ratio at 0.90. Do you guys expect that to change with the mayor running the show? I might add that in terms of taking care of the ball, ski should probably be thrown in to the discussion. I think he had the second-most turnovers on the team behind Carlon.
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Our assist to T/O ratio looks bad because we didn't have many assists. So I am going to look at our turnover rate instead. CU as a team turned the ball over 19.5% of the time, which isn't actually that bad. (Snow is going to like this part) - Nate turned the ball over on 26.2% of his possessions, Dinwiddie did on 15.8%. So yes I think this is going to get better. Ski turned it over on 19.1% of his possessions, but I think it is important to remember who he was playing with last year (primarily Adams, SHT and Chen). He had to force things b/c nobody else was doing anything, we may see his turn over rate go down. I do also think that our assist/to ratio will get better this year b/c we should have more assists.
 
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jgisland said:
but I think it is important to remember who he was playing with last year (primarily Adams, SHT and Chen).
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Please don't remind me of that rotation. I was in "Tad can do no wrong" kool aid pre season mode and just reading that made some of my kool aid come back up.
 
UtterBuffLuv said:
Please don't remind me of that rotation. I was in "Tad can do no wrong" kool aid pre season mode and just reading that made some of my kool aid come back up.
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eh, when life gives you lemons, it's pretty hard to make anything decent other than lemonade.
 
One thing I think is important to point out with The Mayor is that we're talking about averages in this thread, but averages don't describe his game.

He's incredibly versatile.

There will be nights when we need scoring punch and we'll see Spencer going for 30, mixing it up between outside shooting, drives to the hoop, and posting up smaller guards.

There will be nights when he plays a pure PG role and dishes a dozen assists while only scoring 6-8 points himself.

There will also be a lot of games where we see him feeding the post and getting the break going early, only to explode with his own offense at the end of the half and end of the game.

Complete basketball player.
 
I can't believe how much faster he looks, he is going to be very hard to guard.
 
jgisland said:
I think that 82% of the mins is high, nobody has played 80% of the minutes on a Tad Boyle coached team. The highest % of minutes any player under Tad has played (CU & UNC included) was Will Figures at UNC playing 79.8% in 2010 and Higgins second playing 79.6% in 2011.

That being said it all depends on the rotations. Is Tad going to play "units or shifts" again? The only PG's on this roster are Dinwiddie, Eli and Talton (who will probably red shirt). So essentially 2 PG's, how long of leash is Eli going to have? Dinwiddie could be in store for a lot of playing time.
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Through 3 games Dinwiddie is playing 74.2% of the minutes and Ski and Dre are both playing 85% of the minutes, something to watch as the season goes on.
 
jgisland said:
Through 3 games Dinwiddie is playing 74.2% of the minutes and Ski and Dre are both playing 85% of the minutes, something to watch as the season goes on.
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If this team is missing anything, it's a scoring threat in a back-up Guard
 
Stalzer can develop into a scoring threat from a backup guard. The young guys like Scott, Johnson will come around by March next year.
 
tante said:
He doesn't know that Scott was the leading scorer in game one and XJ was huge in game two. I am more worried about Dre and Spencer on offense right now.
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Spencer is adjusting to having the ball in is hands more, this is to be expected. His FT % drop is concerning though he's shooting at 54% clip this year vs 82 last year.
 
absinthe said:
Spencer is adjusting to having the ball in is hands more, this is to be expected. His FT % drop is concerning though he's shooting at 54% clip this year vs 82 last year.
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Spencer's had monster defensive assignments the last 2 games and has delivered. Another 1 today. We're putting a ton of responsibility on him and he's probably gassing a bit.
 
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