With the college basketball season inching closer, we’ll be taking a long look at the conference at large as well as Indiana’s roster over the next few weeks. Today, we continue our look at our preseason All-Big Ten team with Wisconsin’s Jordan Taylor.
The 2010-11 Hoosiers got a taste for Jordan Taylor’s deadliness on senior night. Taylor took over in the second half of a game Indiana was in, hit a bunch of highly-contested threes and put the Badgers on his back en route to 39 points and the W.
It was a punch right to Assembly Hall’s gut.
But Taylor makes the cut here not just for his deep-threat shooting (42.9 percent from beyond the arc last season), but for playing with startling efficiency. According to KenPom, Taylor’s turnover percentage was just 8.5 percent last season, good for second in the nation. His assist rate was 30.4 percent (77th in the nation), meaning nearly a third of buckets made by Wisconsin with Taylor on the court came via a pass from him. His offensive rating — which measures personal offensive efficiency — clocked in at 126.9, which put him ahead of guys like Jared Sullinger and NBA lottery picks Derrick Williams, Tristan Thompson and Marcus Morris. And this was all from a guy that had the ball in his hands a lot, as he runs the point and played 90.6 percent of available minutes last season.
2011-2012 All-Big Ten Preview: Draymond Green
With the college basketball season inching closer, we’ll be taking a long look at the conference at large as well as Indiana’s roster over the next few weeks. Today, we continue our look at our preseason All-Big Ten team with Michigan State’s Draymond Green.
After two straight trips to the Final Four, it was presumed that the leadership of Draymond Green, along with former Big Ten Player of the Year Kalin Lucas, could help guide Tom Izzo’s club into a battle with Ohio State for a conference championship and another deep run in March.
Instead, the Spartans were the country’s most disappointing team in the regular season and fell to UCLA 76-74 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Green went out on a high note individually in that narrow loss as he notched just the seventh triple-double in tournament history (his second triple-double of the season) with 23 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists, but could only lament his disappointment that his days playing alongside Lucas were over afterward.
Looking at his advanced stats profile over at KenPom, Green’s shooting percentage from inside the 3-point line dipped by 10 percent last season, which is a significant decline. That was a product of settling more for the mid-range jump shot and doing less work in the paint.
But with those added shots from the perimeter, Green knocked down close to 37 percent of his 3-pointers (37-of-101) after only attempting a total of 17 during his first two seasons. This added dimension helped morph Green from a player defenders could sag off to one that now demands attention all over the floor.
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