Ten percent of the season is in the books for ECU now, and while we have an opportunity let's recognize that Brandon Johnson and Javon Small are both in the top 85 players nationally in Efficiency vs D1
#57 Brandon Johnson
#81 Javon Small
NCAA Basketball Player Stats - NBA Efficiency (teamrankings.com)
While it's certainly not a murders row ECU has played, they have both had some of the most impressive starts in the nation and I like this metric especially early when all the skewed non D1 games are removed. It will matter less when everyone has played 30 games, but right now you got teams running up the score on non D1's. This equalizes that.
In Torvik's Points Over Replacement Per Adjusted Game includes more defense components
Small is 73rd in the nation. Johnson missed the best team defensive game and comes in at 294th in that.
T-Rank Player Stats - Customizable College Basketball Tempo Free Stats - T-Rank (barttorvik.com)
It's early, the competition wasn't good, but it's a good showing for both to this point to be able to put together 2 or 3 games like they have in a row. I worried if anyone would even be efficient at all in the preseason. It's more dependent on offense and I didn't see ECU shooting as well or being top 85 in an offense like they are at this point. To use Schwartz's words, it's probably Fools Gold, but hopefully not.
A few more games of this for Small and I'll become more of a believer. Right now there are a few too many bank shots I think are keeping his shooting unsustainably high but I'm certainly more of a believer than I was coming into the season. It's good to have players putting up national numbers either way.
