Distracting You From Kyle Anderson's In-Home Visit Today With Georgetown

We're in the throes in the Kyle Anderson recruiting battle and fact based discussion has become as rare as, well, what you expect from a blog whose main off-season features are documentation of lunch and headbands.  So in an effort to distract you from Georgetown's massive, possibly program-altering in-home visit with Anderson in New Jersey today, let's take a look a few interesting college hoops nuggets around the internet.  Unlike the material produced from the wizards at Hoya Prospectus, there will be no fancy graphs or original materials, but rather clumsy interpretations of a  few interesting stat-based papers. 

The first is from Burnt Orange Nation who use some linear regression and other tools to analyze the value of recruiting and experience for winning team.  They come to the following conclusion:

Using our regression model, getting a player with a top 30 RSCI ranking into the starting lineup has a slightly lower, but similar effect on predicted SRS as does returning one player who has started for two seasons, or two players who have each started for one season.

So top 30 recruit is about as valuable as a two year starter. The overall takeaway, as an adept de-wonker put it in the comment section puts it, is: "It’s the connection between Top 30 anchors and guys who are providing value as juniors and seniors"

What it means for Georgetown: Lots of Otto Porter and Jason Clark together.

More after the Jump:

There's a been a lot of grumbling about Jason Clark -- many suspect he's the weakest link in a younger, more athletic line-up and hope that his spot in the starting line up gives way to Otto Porter or Jabril Trawick. However, if JT3 is to play the odds, he'll try to play Jason Clark (2 year starter) and Otto Porter at the same time as much as possible (and note I'm already stretching the data to conform to my hypothesis because Otto sat just outside the top 30 as a consensus #34 player).

Second, Basketball Prospectus put together a particularly timely study called "Far Away Games" that tries to measure how freshman playing time is impacted by a trip abroad. While the sample data is quite small and the results are scattered wildly, it interesting to take a look at how it's impacted other teams. 

What it means for Georgetown: Not much. There's not predictive power here -- but I fully expect that Georgetown to post a very high % change in freshman minutes played from the average over the last three years (though that's not quite considering 5 in the incoming class with 3 starters graduated, 2 transfers and a year long injury).

Finally, Kenpom unveiled an very nifty feature that shows each players most similar comparisons. Here's the most relevant one:

For those without microscopic vision, after Draymond Green, Evan Turner, and right before Gordon Hayward, Greg Monroe's sophomore season is most similar to.... Jeff Green's sophomore season.

What it means for Georgetown: Even more irrefutable proof that if Greg Monroe has stayed for his junior year, Georgetown would've been a Final Four team. At least.

Also, while I was poking around, there was also some good premonitions for Henry Sims in the Excel-fueled tea leaves. Yes, Henry has never lived up to expectations -- but he has steadily improved since his freshman year.  % Poss, Offensive Rating, eFG%, Defensive Rebounding % and Assist rate have all increased, in some cases dramatically. There are definite setbacks (sophomore minutes played), but the staff has clearly helped Henry develop over the last few years and it's not outrageous to hope for modest gains. 

And that's all. Thank you liberal arts degree for allowing this insight unhindered by sound mathematics possible.