Over the course of last season, many UConn fans (including those of us here at ADB) compared freshman center Amida Brimah to former UConn big man Hasheem Thabeet. After all, both were raw, inexperienced, gigantic, African centers who blocked a lot of shots. With Brimah (hopefully) taking the next step this coming season, I thought I might take a more scientific approach to comparing the two.
When comparing developing players, age is an incredibly important component. Fortunately, Thabeet and Brimah both turned 20 during February of their freshman year, so that provides me with a very good point of comparison. The raw stats seem to favor Thabeet, as he scored 6.2 points, nabbed 6.4 rebounds, and swatted away 3.8 shots as a freshman, compared to Brimah’s 4.1/3.0/2.8. Of course, that doesn’t take playing time into account, so I have to adjust for minutes played. But that also doesn’t tell the whole story. See, you may remember that Ol’ Jimmy Calhoun loved to see his boys sprinting up and down the court, and as a result, UConn teams under Calhoun used a lot more possessions than UConn teams that play under Kevin Ollie’s more deliberate, pro-style offense. The team averaged 69.40 possessions per game in 2007, compared to only 64.60 in 2014. So we have to adjust for pace, as well.
Using mathematical wizardry, I was able to determine that Thabeet “used” 17.93% of all possessions when he was on the floor as a freshman, compared to 16.03% for Brimah this past season. However, Brimah still scored at a higher rate than Thabeet, netting 15.55 points/100 team possessions(tp) to Thabeets 14.60. This is both the result of Brimah’s superior shooting (64% from the floor vs. 55%) and Thabeet’s tendency to turn the ball over (3.71/100tp vs. 2.67/100tp for Brimah). And while neither is generally called on to dish out a lot of assists, Brimah notched 1.05/100tp to Thabeet’s 0.91.
So that’s the good news. The picture isn’t as pretty on defense. For starters, Thabeet was a significantly better rebounder, posting 15.05/100tp to Brimah’s 11.45, an increase of nearly 40%. Shot-blocking, the hallmark of both players, also favors Thabeet, though not by much (9.00/100tp to 8.78). The biggest area where Thabeet holds the advantage, however, is in foul rate. Thabeet, as a freshman, averaged 6.20 personals for every 100 team possessions. Brimah averaged a staggering 11.07, a crippling number for a team relying on him to provide regular minutes inside.
What do these numbers mean? Well, not a whole lot, other than to say that Brimah was a little better on offense than Thabeet was at a similar stage, but not as good on defense, at rebounding, or at avoiding fouls. But what if we used Thabeet’s development in these categories to project Brimah going forward? It won’t be particularly scientific, since I’m basing my projections on a sample size of one, but since they profile so similarly, it’s worth a shot.
From Thabeet’s freshman year to his sophomore year, his possession-use increased by 5.41%, and his scoring rate increased by 32.12%. His turnovers decreased by 12.94%, and his fouls decreased by 22.74%. That’s all good. His rebounding, assist, and shotblocking rates decreased by 3.65%, 26.37%, and 8.89% respectively. The first is pretty insignificant, the second is a skill he never really had, and the third remained outstanding, so I’m not going to worry too much about those.
If we take those percentages and apply them to Brimah’s freshman year numbers, we come up with 16.90 possessions used/100 team possessions, 20.54 points, 2.32 turnovers, and 8.55 fouls. If we assume that Brimah’s rebounding and shotblocking will stay more-or-less steady (a conservative assumption for the rebounding, though probably about accurate for the shotblocking), what does that mean for his overall performance next season?
The one question this leaves is: how many minutes will Brimah be able to play next season? Largely due to foul trouble (though inconsistent performance played a part as well), Brimah was only able to play 16.2 minutes/game last year. I’m going out on a limb on this one, but in Thabeet’s case, his fouls/game stayed steady throughout his career (2.6 as a freshman, 2.6 as a sophomore, 2.5 as a junior) as his minutes increased. Therefor, it could be assumed that his playing time was, in large part, dictated by his foul rate. If we assume the same for Brimah, he’d be looking at about 21 minutes/game. Going from these projections, and assuming a similar pace for the UConn offense, that would put him around 7 points, 4 rebounds (though, again, I think this is pretty conservative), and 3 blocks in 21 minutes/game. Not superstar numbers, but certainly worthy of a capable platoon with junior Phil Nolan. If sophomore Kentan Facey and incoming freshman Rakim Lubin are able to adequately hold down the power forward spot, UConn might have just enough in the frontcourt for another postseason run, given the plethora of backcourt and wing weapons they’ll have.
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