TIME IS A PONY RIDE

So the PL season is now officially over. It was the best season in league history, with two postseason wins, and huge national exposure for Bucknell. We say goodbye to the class of 2005, confident that some of them will find success in Europe as pros, and that others will get boring normal jobs like the rest of us.

Let's take a look at the effects their departures will have on their respective squads.

This is a list of the PL class of 2005. Next to each player is their Approximate Value, adjusted to match the same data if they played 82 games (i.e. in the NBA). On the far right is the percentage of shots each player took for their team over the 14 games of league play. This metric ignores whether the shot went in and out of conference performance, but it does a good job of letting us know how takes are distributed over a team.

Army and Bucknell only have one Senior per squad, neither of whom was looked to for much offensive output. Chris Niesz was valuable, but only took 5% of his team's shots. I don't think anyone out there could pick Ray Frederick out of a crowd.

All of the other teams, however, have significant holes to fill. AU in particular will need more contributions from its younger players, losing the two seniors rated highest by AV, Jason Thomas and Raimondas Petrauskas. Other notable departures are Andrew Zidar at CU, John Hurley and Nate Lufkin at HC, Sean "Half Court" Knitter at LC, Nick Monserez at Lehigh, and George O'Garro and Taj Mathews at Navy.



This chart is the percentage of shots taken by seniors on each squad. You'll notice one thing straight off: AU has some work to do. Their 5 seniors took 56% of their shots, much more than any other squad in the league. In a way, that's a good thing: you want your most experienced players getting looks to the basket. But it's also a bad thing, because Jeff Jones now has to put those extra looks in the hands of untested guys like Brayden Billbe, Sekou Lewis, Paul Jones from Lithuania, and the incoming freshman class. Sure, Andre Ingram will shoot more, but he can't shoot EVERY time down the floor.

HC, Navy, and Colgate also have to find new hands to put their shots in. Bucknell and Army, on the other hand, have known commodities (albeit with a much different talent level) that they can rely on.



One more stat. This one is the percentage of their team's rebounds each senior had. Ray Fredrick is not included because he didn't get any rebounds. None. You can tell that Zidar did yeoman's work under the hoops, getting 21% of the rebounds his team pulled down. That includes when he's not on the floor. Also notable are Sean Knitter and John Hurley's stats. Knitter in particular is impressive, given his limited minutes.



Now, a listing of what % of their rebounds each team is losing. AU, again, will need a lot more boards from guys like Billbe and their USC transfer (I'm going to keep calling him Paul Jones). HC, Lehigh, and CU will need rebounding contributions from younger players as well.

AU looks to have a lot to overcome if they want to compete next year. Depending on how their freshmen and role players like Billbe and Lewis perform, it's possible. AU has lost guys like Doctor, Miles, Stokes, and Rodriguez, and still remained competitive. But they've never lost a senior class this important. Everyone else should be able to patch up holes. 30% of a team isn't tough to get over. 50% might be.  @ 11:53 AM