It wasn’t even a full 6 months ago when I was asked if Tyler Kolek had a shot to win Big East Player of the Year and I pretty much blew off the possibility, as I didn’t think Marquette would win enough nor Kolek put up enough counting numbers.
Boy was that wrong. He not only won BEPoY but was also a consensus All-American, making the 2nd team for the USBWA and Sporting News as well as the 3rd team on the AP and NABC ballots. An incredibly deserved honor, I might add.
But as the 2024 season ever so slowly comes into focus, I was asked to see what past returning All Americans had done, to better set what the expectations for Kolek should be.
For starters, I limited the search to just point guards and smaller shooting guards, as it didn’t make sense to compare Tyler with the Edey’s of the world. And I also only went back to 2013, as that was a big enough sample to start making some observations. Finally, I limited the list to just consensus All-Americans, meaning they were listed in all 4 publications (or all 3 from 2013-2018 as the USBWA didn’t publish a 3rd team until 2019). Those parameters got us to 61 consensus selections, with 6 being selected in back to back years.
How common is it for an All-American guard to return to college?
Turns out, it’s quite rare. Of the 61 consensus All-Americans since 2013, only 8 have ever come back to school, including Kolek, and no one has done it since Jared Butler in 2020.
More on this group in a bit.
Of the remaining 53, there were 9 that graduated that season without being drafted and the rest (44) were drafted into the NBA.
So to put a percent on it, in a little over a decade, only 13% of consensus All-Americans come back to school while 72% end up getting drafted (with 31 of those 44 still having eligibility). Just by coming back to school, we are seeing a bit of history from Kolek.
How good are those All-American guards upon their return to college?
I think the list above kinda gave it away, but those guards that do come back end up being just-as, if not more, amazing the following season. In fact, of the 7 players that returned (not including Kolek) 6 of them were chosen as consensus All-Americans once more the following season, with only Marcus Smart being left out. And from those 6, all but Cassius Winston ended up jumping to a consensus 1st team All American. (Of note, Smart actually had a much more statistically impressive season in 2014 despite the lack of national accolades, and was the 6th pick in the NBA draft.)
So without knowing much more detail, it’s a pretty conservative guess to say that Tyler Kolek will be expected to make an All-America team next season, if history is to be a guide.
But that’s not enough for me, as I want to be able to put a number on those expectations. So I pulled a lot of stats from those returnees and compared their performance to the following season to set a baseline for expectation.
All-In-One Stats
Ideally, I’d use something like RAPM here, but as Hoop-Explorer’s database doesn’t go back far enough, I stuck to Evan Maya’s BPR as well as SBUnfurled’s URate. BPR takes more defense into account, while URate is a comprehensive aggregator (full details here).
What these two stats do show is that, although there is a bit of fluctuation, you can assume that a player’s performance will remain at the All-American level, with a bit of a jump not out of the question. On average, their BPR went up by 9.1% (from 5.2 to 5.6) the next season while URate went up by 5.5% from 9.2 to 9.7.
Without focusing too much on any one player (looking at you, Cassius) or any one stat, it’s enlightening to see that even the dips are to All-American type numbers.
Point Guard Stats
While most of the comparable comps are more scoring and than point guards, I was very interested in seeing how assist rates and turnover rates fared from one year to the next, as Kolek’s playmaking is what makes him so special.
Although the average across all 7 is positive (up 5.8%) for assist rate, most of the comps were starting from fairly low assist rates. Only Winston’s ARate was over 40 and he saw a pretty stark decline. So I’m not sure how much we can take away from this.
From a turnover perspective, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, with a positive median and average. I don’t think this tells us too much, TBH.
The Works
Finally, I pulled the usual stats I like to check out while I’m scrolling KenPom. From here we can see that ORtg does tend to trend upwards, with Carsen’s enormous jump in usage and minutes and Winston’s decline being the only outliers.
We can expect Kolek to maintain a similar minute load, though a small decrease isn’t out of the question, while usage will stay relatively stable. The only place where we might bake in a bit of regression is for free throw rate, where the average saw a 0.7% decline year over year.
What does all this mean?
Nothing really, a tiny sample of recent history is more of a cool bit a trivia than basis for predictive modeling. But even if it isn’t indicative of what will happen, it does give us a foundation for expectations. The players that have been in a similar position to Kolek in the past decade have all turned in quite incredible, award-winning seasons.
I mean, just being in company with that impressive group says a lot about how exciting it is to have a player of that caliber return.
And before I douse any of the excitement, here are Kolek’s 2024 projected numbers based off the average of these 7 players, Hoop-Explorer’s model and TRank’s model.
Obviously quite a bit of variance for ORtg, but in general, all 3 have Kolek’s expected contributions staying incredibly high. I’ll never bet against the reigning BEPOY and BETMVP.
The season can’t come soon enough.
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