David Joplin appreciation post

I’ve written lots about Kam Jones and Chase Ross this season. Plus Stevie Mitchell and Ben Gold. Heck, we’ve even discussed bench play at length on Twitter. But one name that is glaringly omitted may be one of the biggest development success stories in Shaka Smart’s Marquette tenure, Milwaukee’s own David Joplin.

Now, there was no slight meant in the omission. I love Jop and have praised him plenty on Twitter.

Here.
Here.
Here as well.

I just hadn’t elaborated these thoughts in long form before. So it’s time to make amends.

Defensive Transformation

And any Joplin article has to start on the defensive end. As a freshman and sophomore, he probably could have stayed in the frountcourt on defensive possessions and had similar impact. That’s hyperbole and extremely harsh, but in general, his positive impact was almost solely on the offensive side of the ball.

It can be very hard to measure what this impact on defense is with any single stat like steal or block rate, so we rely on some of the super advanced stats the incorporate on/off as well as opponent lineups to give us at least a general picture. And looking at the chart below, that general picture is clear as day.

Even without having to break down exactly what goes into Evan Miya’s DBPR or Hoop Explorer’s DRAPM, you can see the jump that happened from 2023 to 2024 as he became more than a microwave scorer off the bench, and the further jump that has taken place this season.

He’s nearly doubled his defensive impact in DBPR and jumped 33% in DRAPM from last season. All while playing a much heavier minute log.

Again, there is not 1 stat that can fully capture what the eye tells us. He’s faster, more attentive off ball and most of all, dependable. You want him out on the court in clutch situations because he can make game changing plays on both ends of the court.

Never could have seen that coming a year or 2 ago.

Jop Blocks

And don’t think this is just an MU fan saying these things. On the Marquette Radio show Thursday night, Shaka spoke about how the goal for Jop has been to not leave any meat on the chicken wing, and become a complete player.

“At times in the past we felt like, he felt like, there was a little bit more there for him to grab hold of. He’s gained a real maturity.”

Furthermore, Shaka said how proud he was of him lately for his blocks.

“He’s had some phenomenal, even game-saving, blocks where he’ll come out of nowhere and he’ll block a shot in a critical moment.”

So I went through Big East play and pulled out all his blocks to date to once again revel in the growth we’ve seen from him in his Marquette career. The last block in the montage against Xavier may be the best this season.

Growth.

Now, part of being a complete player is being able to do it on both ends, and halfway through this season, Joplin’s growth hasn’t been limited to simply the defensive end.

He’s putting up a career best Offensive Rating on his highest percent of minutes played, and doing so with his usage going back up to 2023 levels when he was Big East 6th Man of the Year. And he didn’t really have a great start to the season, putting up some strange clunkers, like the 0-10 shooting against Central Michigan.

But of late, he’s taken his game up to another level, not only capable of dropping 30 points on a given night, but efficiently scoring when his team needs him, without necessarily being a high usage player.

Since conference play started, Joplin has been playing 30+ minutes a game and putting up an ORtg of nearly 115.

And the thing that has stuck out the most to me is his ability to get to the free throw line, where he has career highs in percent of his shots now coming from the line compared to from the field. And he’s shooting over 80% when there. This newfound ability to create contact down low has helped bring his field goal percentage to career best levels (2022 tiny samples not withstanding), as those contested misses now are dropped from the tally.

Here are the full results from barttorvik.com.

Doubling his career average and increasing his efficiency and accuracy while doing so? Can’t ask for much more than that.

Conclusion

I’ll have to give a shout out to Phil Bush of the Scrambled Eggs Podcast, who has been leading the JopWagon charge for 3 seasons now.

Joplin has started to put it all together and is making sure his MU career closes with no meat left on the bone, to use Shaka’s expression. There is still lots of season to go, so the book is not yet closed, but current trends have given us plenty to be excited about down the stretch.

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