My Gift to You: Nonconference Edition Big Ten PORPAG

[And, no, I don't have the receipt.]

Original post on Points Over Replacement Per Adjusted Game (PORPAG) is here.  Last season's conference-only numbers are here.  Big picture concept/caveats:

As a refresher, this stat is an attempt to measure the marginal points per game a player contributes to his team on offense above what a "replacement-level" player would provide.

Major caveats: (1) Basketball is a team, not an individual, sport and (2) this stat tells you nothing whatsoever about defense.

Technical stuff:

• Pace factor is set at 62 possession/game--roughly the average for Big Ten play last year.  Per usual, Big Ten teams are playing at (mostly) faster paces during pre-conference play.
• I've continued to leave the "replacement-level" offensive rating at 88.0.
• This stat is meant to measure cumulative, rather than average, offensive impact.  So missing time due to injury hurts you.
• This is pre-conference data, including all nonconference games played to date other than tonight's Ohio State/UT-Martin game.  The strengths of pre-conference schedules vary widely.  At the extremes, John Shurna put his numbers up against much less stiff competition than Draymond Green did.
• The table below includes all players who've played at least 40% of their teams' minutes in conference play.  Data is pulled from StatSheet.com.  The Minute% numbers can be a little glitchy for players that have missed time due to injury/etc.  I'm not aware of any such issues so far this season, although I may be missing something.

Lots and lots of numbers after the jump:

Bullets:

• No sense dwelling on the MSU entries, since this is basically just another way of looking at the data we looked at last week.  Lucas, Green, and Summers have been good, but not that good.  No one has stepped up as consistent 4th and 5th offensive options.
• John Shurna is shooting over .600 from both 2-point and 3-point range.  Regardless of the level of competition, that's pretty impressive.  Shurna has scored 20+ points in 8 of 10 games, including all 3 games vs. KenPom top-100 opponents.
• Leuer and Taylor are about as good an inside/outside combo as Bo Ryan could ask for in his offense.  The question is what he gets out of the supporting cast.  No other Wisconsin player listed above has a usage rate about 18%.  Tim Jarmusz should probably shoot a little more; he leads the conference in offensive rating but has a usage rate (just) below 10%.
• Same deal for Purdue: Can they get enough from guys other than Moore and Johnson?  The only other two guys with usage rates approaching 20 both have offensive ratings hovering around 90.  (Purdue does have the advantage of a top-5 defense, though.)
• Darius Morris has gotten real good real fast.  Second most prolific passer in the country, and he's converting 57% of his 2-point attempts.
• Demetri McCamey's been up and down in terms of scoring totals; he's only scored 15+ points in 6 of 13 games.  But that's more a function of knowing when to shoot than it is of bad shooting nights.  McCamey has only had one game (the opener) in which he made less than one-third of his 3-point attempts.
• Talor Battle has been Battle-esque.  And Jeff Brooks is looking like a legitimate #2 option.  Those two players combined for 42 points on 26 FGA in a very big Big Ten-play-opening road win vs. IU tonight.
• Four of the top 17 players on the list are from Ohio State.  And a slow-starting William Buford is not among those four players.  And the Buckeyes have been better on defense--#1 in the nation according to KenPom vs. #5 on offense.  In a pretty solid conference, Ohio State stands head and shoulders above the rest of the league.
• At this point (working much more off numbers than eyeballs), I'd go with McCamey, Moore, Shurna, Leuer, and Sullinger for all-Big Ten honors.