Vince Edwards looks a little more athletic...

[purdue4sure]

The more I watch VE play and grow, the more it really is evident his "star rating" was way off.

I haven't been this stoked for the basketball season to start for a very long time. I've always been pretty excited, but there is just something more to it that suggests the next couple years could be pretty special at Purdue.

And it's fun around here when people are debating who starts or who gets the most minutes or how far Purdue will go. Much more fun than arguing over whether MP should be fired.

 

[njm8845]

The formula, which njm posted not long ago, rewards statsheet stuffers and gives a high weighting to assists. RJ was a talented, staff stuffer with high assist totals, but unfortunately he had his own agenda and, from what I can tell, was hard to coach.

Daddy's right. Obviously one can only account for stats when trying to roll up a player's worth into a single number. The other issues that most people associate with RJ are hard to quantify.

I don't know if I'd say I weight assists "heavily", but they do count. As a freshman, RJ averaged almost 4.1 APG. That's really impressive, especially for a freshman, as it ranks 8th of any player since 1992. We have to remember, that before RJ had even played a game, Painter said he could go down as the best PG in Purdue history. The dude was talented.

As an aside, in his freshman year, Cardinal dished 58 assists and only 8 turnovers. That's incredible. Unfortunately, it was kind of a fluke, because he posted A/TO ratios of no higher than 1.3 for the rest of his career.

 

[BoilerBulldog]

My stats show that Edwards had the 7th best freshman year since 1992. Arbitrary year, but it's when I began tracking stats.

ROBINSON, G. 71.0
CARDINAL, B. 63.4
HUMMEL, R. 61.0
MOORE, E. 52.3
JOHNSON, R. 48.1
HAMMONS, A. 47.6
EDWARDS, V. 46.9

Big Dog never had a freshman year but I understand your point and appreciate the stats. Very interesting.

 

[thenagemj02]

"Daddy's right. Obviously one can only account for stats when trying to roll up a player's worth into a single number. The other issues that most people associate with RJ are hard to quantify."


If there was a stat used to measure the amount of times a low-percentage shot was taken, missed, and rebounded by the team opposing the shooter, Ronnie Johnson would have the all-time record in that category. Or it could be a stat measuring the amount of times lay-ups or floaters were missed with two or three defenders already set in the area that the shot was taken. I suppose one could say that Terone Johnson was pretty high up in that as well, but I think Ronnie might have been more prolific in that unflattering category. Plus, Terone was better at finishing in traffic than Ronnie, IMO.

 

[BoilerDaddy]

If there was a stat used to measure the amount of times a low-percentage shot was taken, missed, and rebounded by the team opposing the shooter, Ronnie Johnson would have the all-time record in that category.

I think that this is a misleading statement, particularly the part about the misses being rebounded by the other team. An interesting stat about the last place team when RJ was a sophomore is that Purdue had 168 putbacks that season, the highest Big Ten total in the past two seasons (despite Purdue not making a post season tournament that season). One of the main reasons that Purdue converted so many putbacks is that RJ regularly drew help and got the ball up on the backboard for his teammates to clean up. I don't recall ever seeing so many putbacks off of a single player's misses.

I think that it was a good thing that RJ transferred for reasons on and off the court, but without RJ attacking the basket that Purdue team would have been even worse than it was.