Kam Jones should be the Big East Player of the Year

Coming into the season, I expected Kam Jones to be good. Like really good. I even wrote at length about how the late season sample of his play gave us more than ample evidence of what was to come.

“All of this is to say, Kam will have the reins of the offense in 2025, and I have full faith in his capable hands.”

What will Marquette’s offense look like in 2025?

And even despite these elevated expectations, Kam has blown so far past it, you kind of forget this is the first full season of his basketball career playing point guard. He isn’t just Marquette’s undisputed best player, I believe he’s done enough to be the Big East Player of the Year.

Value

How do you even define “player of the year” when it comes to an award like Big East Player of the Year. It doesn’t explicitly say most valuable or best. It doesn’t always go to the top player on the best team, as we saw with Devin Carter last season on a Providence team that finished outside the top-50 and didn’t make the tournament. Heck, some coaches even vote out of spite.

So acknowledging that there is no consistency and stats don’t matter really helps put the award into context. It’s a vibes thing.

But that ain’t me.

And using freely accessible measures and databases tells us that there isn’t a more valuable player in the conference this season than Kam Jones. That isn’t Kam stan blogger saying it, that is the hard data.

I’ve been diving deep into on/off metrics this season in part because we’ve never seen anything like what Kam is doing, not just at Marquette but in the Big East. When Kam Jones is on the floor, removing garbage time stats and adjusting all stats for opponent quality per 100 possessions, Marquette’s offensive rating is 31.7 points better than its defensive rating. So MU outscores an average opponent by 31.7 points every 100 possessions when Kam is playing.

To put a context on that number, that would be the 7th best team differential in the country on its own. And to put in further context of the Big East, it’s the best On Net Rating of all the BEPOY contenders.

Zuby Ejiofor: +29.7
RJ Luis: +28.1
Kadary Richmond: +25.4
Ryan Kalkbrenner: +22.5
Eric Dixon: +19.4

Of course, what any sane person will tell you is it’s foolish to compare net ratings like this across teams because net ratings rely on teammates as well. Putting prime Jordan on a team with 4 other middle aged basement bloggers will make him look terrible. We can’t hold it against Eric Dixon that he plays for possibly the worst coach in the Big East and the roster lacks talent.

But this is where the “Off” ratings really come into play. We don’t have to guess what a team would look like when a given player is off the court, we have an exact number. When Kam is off the floor, it’s not just that Marquette isn’t as good, duh, it’s that Marquette becomes the 2nd worst team in the history of the modern Big East, with a Net Rating of -9.8, which would put Marquette in the mid 260s for a ranking.

Using the same 5 as above, here’s how their absences impact their teams:

Eric Dixon: +0.2
Zuby Ejiofor: +10.2
Ryan Kalkbrenner: +14.9
RJ Luis: +17.3
Kadary Richmond: +26.7

The fact I have listed 3 St. John’s players should be a giveaway that they are not reliant on any 1 player for their success. But it should also show you that the most important player for them is easily Zuby Ejiofor. They are at their best with him on the floor, and at their worst with him off.

And in that vein, I’ve been keeping a chart of the most valuable players on each Big East team this season.

You don’t have to use your gut. One look at the chart above makes it self-evident why no one comes close to meaning more for their team than Kam Jones. Marquette has played like the best team in the conference with him on and like the worst team in the conference with him off. You expect a team to be worse playing without their top player, but we’ve never seen anything like this before.

Of course, this is where someone can and will say, top players play most of the time anyway, so the time spent off the court isn’t a representative sample. And there’s truth to that. When I spoke to Marquette’s staff, they suggested not even looking at any stats that didn’t have at least 100 possessions, as small variances could lead to overreactions and misinterpretation. But all 6 of these players have at least 1500 possessions on the court, and 240 off of it (removing garbage time) so we can reasonably infer this isn’t some fluke due to a random couple of shots being made.

And one more thing, by every reliable ranking from KenPom to NET to Bart Torvik to Massey to WAB to you name it, Marquette has been the 2nd best team in the conference this season. It’s not like we are talking about a middle of the pack squad set to miss the NCAA tournament by a mile.

The value Kam has provided isn’t simply on paper or in the box score, it has resulted directly into the overall record and ultimate team success.

Best

But hey, for some people, On/Off is too fuzzy to grasp. They want tangible results that do show up in box scores and can be measured. And for those people, Kam Jones should be the clear choice as well.

Let’s start with the obvious fact that he’s the best point guard in the conference (further bolstered by his inclusion as one of the 5 finalists for the Cousy Award, where no other Big East players were named). Unlike in previous seasons, where Kam was tasked with leading the team in scoring, he still has that on his plate but is also responsible for setting the table for everyone else on most possessions. And he’s done that better than any player this season.

Take a look at the chart below, mapping assist rate and turnover rate. Generally speaking, the higher the assist rate for a player, the higher the turnover rate. There is a pretty clear trendline. Except for one random outlier in Kam Jones, who not only leads the Big East in assist rate, but also has a miniscule turnover rate. This is unheard of.

If we expand the search to include all Big East players who played at least 60% of minutes in 15 games, and had at least 25% ARate, you can see that Kam is putting up a historic season. Tyler Kolek is the only other Big East player in the last 18 seasons to have an assist rate over 40 and a turnover rate under 19. It’s just unheard of.

But of course, it’s not fair to judge everyone who isn’t a point guard against Kam’s PG skillset. Kalkbrenner would eat Kam alive in every defensive and rebounding stat, they simply do very different things.

So that’s why I tend to rely on impact metrics like RAPM from Hoop-Explorer and BPR from Evan Miya. These are able to put both sides of the ball in context, not just offense, and account for roles based on teammates. They aren’t perfect, of course, but tend to be way more reliable than eye test or cherry picked like points per game.

And using those type of metrics, Kam Jones isn’t just the bast player in the conference, he’s one of the best players in the modern history of the conference.

HE RAPM = Hoop Explorer Regularized Adjusted Plus Minus
EM BPR = Evan Miya Bayesian Performance Rating
CBBA RAPM = CBB Analytics Regularized Adjusted Plus Minus
Win Sh = CBB Analytics Win Shares
BASIC = CBB Dash Box Aggregate Score using Impact, Counting and efficiency stats

Evan Miya’s BPR has stats going back to 2012. In that span, only 4 players have had BPR’s (which “is interpreted as the number of points per 100 possessions better than the opponent the player’s team is expected to be”) over 8.0.

Donovan Clingan in 2024: 9.89 (NCAA Champion)
Jalen Brunson in 2018: 8.67 (NCAA Champion)
Mikal Bridges in 2018: 8.23 (NCAA Champion)

And now currently Kam with an 8.32. No, I don’t think he’ll win a title, but just wanted to put into context why this is such an impactful metric. The context it gives helps you to understand why a player is special, and how it compares to those around him. And what it tells us is Kam has been historically good.

Conclusion

One more thing, we don’t have to look very far to find the last time a Marquette player won a BEPOY. Tyler Kolek did just 2 seasons ago, with a magnificent season on his way to a historic Big East double title. I was curious to how his stats compared to Kam’s, just for fun.

By every statistical measure, Kam has been as good or better than Kolek was in 2023. Of course, that team was ranked in the top-10 at the time voting happened and went 17-3 in the Big East, which matters greatly, he was the best player on the best team, an easy and worthy storyline.

Funny part is, if we use KenPom’s raw Adj Efficiency margin, this 2025 MU team, despite being ranked much lower and with more losses, grades out a tad bit better than the 2023 team: 22.56 v 22.38.

No, AdjEm is not greater than actual results, but as we’re grading the best player, I do think this makes a difference. Kolek had two other (and likely 3) top-40 draft picks on the court with him to help any given game. Kam does not have a 2023 Kam to help shoulder the scoring load. In just 120 minutes, Big East opponents outscored Marquette by 47 points this season when Kam was off the floor. There is no margin for error.

What Kam Jones has achieved both at an individual level and for the team as a whole is special in Marquette and conference history. He may not be rewarded as such when the votes are counted, but there is no doubt in my mind Kam Jones is the Big East player of the year.

---

---