Back in December, after Marquette put up maybe it’s worst offensive performance in the Shaka Smart era against Providence, MU legend and Field of 68 analyst Jerel McNeal made a point to say it felt like the team needed more from David Joplin.
Now, don’t misconstrue that as an attack on Joplin. Jerel has been an amazing advocate for the program on social media for years, and still is, even in his night-time job when he’s on the Field of 68 show.
It was just a fact that at that point in the season, Joplin had been underwhelming not only in filling the shoes of OMax, which wasn’t a fair task, but even of meeting his prior year baseline. Below is the full array of stats as of December 20th from BartTrovik.
Joplin had the worst offensive rating of any player on the team getting at least 40% of minutes, had the lowest assist rating, lowest free throw rate and was the worst finisher at the rim, making a miserable 38.7% of his twos. And again, this is to say nothing of the defensive side of the ball.
But to me, the most unbelievable stat in that screenshot, and not in a good way, was the usage rate.
For those unfamiliar, sites like KenPom, and in this case BartTorvik, calculate what percentage of a team’s possessions (trips down the court) a player uses when he’s on the court. That could be a shot (made or missed without an offensive rebound), a foul drawn that results in free throws or a turnover.
Since he was a freshman, Joplin’s usage rate had been over 21%, because he’s always had a green light to shoot. Here’s part of a thread from 2022 going in on how green that light actually was.
Joplin finished with over 20% usage both his freshman (21.6%) and sophomore (23.7%) years, including posting the 2nd highest usage on the team last season.
Which is why seeing that he was now using only using 16.6% of possessions when he was on the floor surprised me so much. If there was one thing we knew about him, it’s that he loved to launch and had the full backing of the team and staff.
At that time, I attributed it to settling into a starter’s role rather then being a microwave off the bench, but it still seemed uncharacteristic.
And it turns out I wasn’t the only one thinking that. Listen to Shaka last week on the Marquette radio show, on how he had personally been “on his backside” to try and get more out of Jop.
Go time
Consider the Jopwagon unlocked.
Using Hoop-Explorer’s single game Player Impact score, which weight box score stats, on offs and opponent quality, 4 of Joplin’s 5 best offensive games this season have come in the last 4 games.
Having great offensive games against DePaul and Georgetown won’t necessarily shift any priors, nor should it, but check out what the game by game usage trend looks like for the Wisconsin native.
His current 5-game average usage rate is 24.5%, a tick above where he finished last season and almost 6 percentage points above where his season average lies.
Outside of anything else you can analyze or point to, the one undeniable fact is that Joplin has become more involved in the offense the past 3 or so weeks, a run that is coinciding with some of Marquette’s best offensive outputs this season.
That’s not to give Joplin all, or even most, of the credit. Some of that usage was being left alone time and again against DePaul. The other was missing Kam Jones for 2 games. Time will tell if this is in fact a return of the high usage (for this Marquette team) Jop.
What we can say with much more certainty is that this version of Jop has been exactly what Marquette needed. His 44% from 3-point range on over 6 attempts a game is 4th best in conference play, and has helped put his ORtg at 113 in Big East games. For reference, he finished the conference season with an ORtg of 100.1 last year.
New Features
But it’s not just that he’s back to his 6th man of the year level, the past few weeks have shown that the Jopwagon has additional bells and whistles we didn’t know about.
In just 2 games he more than doubled his output of assists this season.
And though some of that is a little hard to fathom, 5 assists in 20 games playing over 20 minutes a game as a non-center specifically, it nonetheless is an encouraging sign that Joplin’s game and comfort is expanding.
Put it in D
And even though I’ve waited this long to mention it, it bears probably hashing out as the headline of a separate post: David Joplin’s defense has been revelatory the past few weeks.
No, he isn’t OMax. No, he is by no means a stopper. The on/off stats still show Marquette better defensively when he’s on the bench.
But he’s bringing a level of hustle and effort that stats may not capture, but video sure can. I’m still stuck on this clip from the Seton Hall game after Joplin created multiple deflections in one possession and got an in-game dap from Shaka.
When Shaka mentions that they wanted to get “more” from Joplin, I imagine EGB type plays on the defensive end are exactly what he is referring to. Listen to the crowd at the end of the clip grow in volume in appreciation of Joplin.
Only time will tell if this was a good stretch or the start of a sustained level, but it does show that he is capable. More than that, how that capability positively impacts the team as a whole.
Paint Touches 
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