Kam Jones, you are ridiculous

Fresh off back to back Big East Player of the Week nods, with well deserved and overdue national attention, I came across a Kam Jones stat that was so lopsided, it made me spend a few hours digging into various databases to try and put it into context.

Kam has played 198 minutes and #mubb is +119.

Kam has sat 42 minutes and #mubb is -19.

What that chart above, and the totals within, show is that with Kam Jones on the floor, Marquette has outscored every single opponent by 15+ points a game. With him off the floor, it has been outscored in 4 out of 6 games, and only has a significant positive differential against the worst team it played, Stony Brook.

Now, I am usually the first person to scream “Plus Minus is a Flawed Stat” as well “Small Sample Size Theater” when I see peeps try to pull on/off stats only a few games into the season. Trust me, I’m right there with you on this.

So I dug into the CBB Analytics database to pull unadjusted On/Off data for the leaders of each Marquette team the past 5 seasons, just to get some context on how rare it was to have a team play poorly without its best player. And let me tell, you, the results make Kam that much more impressive.

As you can see above, no Marquette player has had a better point differential than Kam’s +119 through 6 games.

No Marquette team has had a worse point differential when a given player is off the floor than Kam’s -19. In fact, only Justin Lewis in 2022 had a negative “Off” numbers, and it was still 18 points higher than Kam’s.

When you standardize the On/Off raw outputs per 100 possessions, like the Net Rating columns above, you see that Kam’s On and Off stats are the most extreme of anyone on the list, not just a small sample quirk.

And again, even though the sample is small, it is small for all 6 versions of Marquette shown above. All 6 teams played multiple cupcakes in that span, and most had not played as many high level games.

What does this mean?

For starters, it means Kam Jones is ridiculously good. So good that the team has trouble replacing what he does on both ends of the floor.

Using Hoop-Explorer’s RAPM metric (in brackets), you can see how his impact has grown year after year. From 0.9 as a freshman to 12.6, a top-15 mark in the country as a senior.

Now I will add that this will definitely fall. MU won’t maintain a 144 Adj ORtg for a full season when he’s on the floor, no matter how good he has become. But one component that might be sustainable is the defense. He hasn’t gotten the same call outs as David Joplin, but his awareness and effort have also improved considerably, to where he’s a real asset.

On the flip side, what this also means is that Marquette’s bench, particularly its guard depth is perilously thin. You don’t get these kinds of splits only by having really, really good players, or else we’d have seen it previously in the recent past.

Yes, Sean Jones is injured while Tre Norman and Damarius Owens are recovering from offseason injuries, so there is a significant lack of ball handlers off the bench, at least at the moment. So theoretically, there is plenty of room for guard bench growth, though the non-conference chances are dwindling.

To exemplify the point, Marquette’s bench guards have only combined to create 13 passing points for others, as measured by Synergy’s points created metric, which takes in the value of the made shots as well as free throw points after fouls.

One bright spot in that chart is Chase Ross’ growth as a creator. Last year, Ross’ passing points created total was only 42 for the full season, which he has blown past in just 6 games. So this isn’t to say Kam is the sole creator on the team.

However, in the 34 minuetes Chase has played without Kam, Marquette has been outscored by 17 points. The screengrab from Hoop-Explorer below gives you an idea of how often this occurs, and the success of MU in that span, with red being bad and green good.

Conclusion

So is this where we panic?

No, of course not. As mentioned above, Marquette’s bench will only get healthier and more experienced, and thought it will never match Kam’s impact, simply allowing Marquette to play teams evenly in the 5 to 8 minutes a game Kam does sit will do wonders in the grind that is a full Big East season.

And we can also, once again, say that Kam Jones’ start to the season has been the stuff of dreams. The stats won’t stay this gaudy all season, but the level he has shown to date deserves every recognition and more and gives me confidence Marquette in the nation’s upper echelon come March once more.

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