Did Markis McDuffie get snubbed for first team all-AAC? Here’s what the numbers say
The coaches in the American Athletic Conference voted Wichita State senior forward Markis McDuffie second team all-conference on Monday, the 21st time in 12 years Gregg Marshall has had a Shocker make first- or second-team all-conference.
McDuffie was an obvious choice for coaches to consider. He’s averaged more points (17.9) than any player in the Marshall era and been the best player on one of the hottest teams in the conference, as WSU (17-13, 10-8) won nine of its final 11 games to vault to the No. 6 seed in the AAC Tournament starting Thursday in Memphis, where the Shockers take on East Carolina around 9 p.m.
But was McDuffie snubbed for first-team honors?
Cincinnati’s Jarron Cumberland, Houston’s Corey Davis Jr. and Memphis’ Jeremiah Martin were all unanimous selections and Temple’s Shizz Alston Jr. had to be close. For good reason: Cumberland or Martin will likely win the player of the year award announced Wednesday, while Davis Jr. was the best player on the best team and WSU fans are well aware of what Alston Jr. can do.
That leaves the final spot, given to Central Florida senior B.J. Taylor. It’s not hard to deduce that the decision for many coaches likely came down to either Taylor or McDuffie for the final spot on their first-team ballot.
“It had to be close,” WSU coach Gregg Marshall said. “I don’t know how the voting went, but I know there’s a lot of good players in this league and (McDuffie) is one of them. It was going to be real close. He had to be sixth in the voting, maybe seventh at the worst. It doesn’t matter. He’s all-conference and he’s our best player for sure and he’s had a really good year for us.”
“I’m blessed,” McDuffie said. “All the hard work me and my team have put in. I just want to thank my teammates for putting me in that position to get that award and Coach Marshall and all of the coaching staff for pushing me every single day and pushing me to be the best leader I can be and the best player I can be for these guys.”
On the surface, it’s not hard to guess why coaches went with Taylor. He was voted preseason player of the year by the coaches, then led UCF with 16.2 points and 3.3 assists. Also important, UCF (23-7, 13-5) finished better than WSU and the Knights look like a NCAA Tournament lock.
But what do the other numbers say?
For fans of traditional stats, McDuffie has the slight edge. He averaged more points than Taylor (17.9 to 16.2) on better shooting numbers — McDuffie went 41/35/81 on field goal, three-point and free-throw shooting, while Taylor went 39/37/78. Taylor, a point guard, did better in assists (3.3 to 1.1), while McDuffie, a forward, did better in rebounds (4.9 to 2.2).
Dig deeper into the analytics and the debate between Taylor and McDuffie essentially boils down to this question: Do you prefer the slightly more efficient player on the better team with more help or the player who produced more and still maintained decent efficiency on a rebuilding team with no established help?
In terms of efficiency, Taylor has McDuffie beat. Any offensive rating above 100 is considered good. Taylor ranks third in the AAC with a 114.7 offensive rating, while McDuffie is seventh with a 109.5 offensive rating.
Another leading analytics site, BartTorvik.com, developed a stat called Points Over Replacement. It estimates how many more points per game a player creates than a hypothetical replacement player would. Taylor ranks sixth in the AAC at 4.4, while McDuffie is tied for seventh at 3.8.
Sports-Reference.com tracks Win Shares, an estimate of how many team wins a player contributed to because of his offense and defense. Taylor tied for fourth in the AAC at 4.7 win shares, while McDuffie is ninth at 3.8.
In a vacuum, those measures justify Taylor as a first-team choice over McDuffie. But that doesn’t take into consideration other factors, such as the players around them. While McDuffie was basically the only player on WSU with meaningful Division I experience, Taylor was the leader of a veteran team that was the popular pick to win the American this season.
McDuffie has been invaluable to the Shockers, especially in the first three months. WSU struggled, but Marshall “shudders to think” where his team would have been without McDuffie. When WSU needed it the most, McDuffie was at his best and averaged 18.8 points on 43 percent shooting in WSU’s first 21 games.
What made the feat even more impressive was that it came with McDuffie as a marked man. He was the first name on the first line of every team’s scouting report. Defenses often sold out to try to slow him down because they knew it was the right gamble to make with no one else on WSU being a consistent threat.
Perhaps McDuffie’s cold shooting (he shot 34.7 percent in the second half of conference play) at the end of the season was what coaches remembered when they voted this past weekend. McDuffie didn’t play like a first team all-conference player then, but he certainly did for the first two-thirds of the season.
So while Taylor was the more efficient player, it’s also important to keep in mind that McDuffie was operating at a higher degree of difficulty and at a different shot quality this season than Taylor. That’s not a knock on Taylor. It’s not his fault he was on a better team with more established players, but it should have mattered when weighing the importance of each player.
If McDuffie had an off game, Wichita State’s chances of winning were close to zero for much of this season. If Taylor had an off game, UCF could lean on another star in Aubrey Dawkins.
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