When a team takes a transfer onto their roster there is always a bit of an unknown regarding how that player will produce on their new team in a new league. New roles, new chemistry, new styles of play, and new calibers of opponents can make things wildly different from the situation a player came from to the situation they transferred to, and it makes for a guessing game for coaches.
Throughout the last decade as transfers have steadily increased, crescendoing to a tsunami of player movement in the summer of 2021, we have seen more than our fair share of transfers would out tremendously, and we have also seen the production of players dip catastrophically at their next stop.
Luckily for the Gators, particularly under Mike White, the transfer portal has been a wellspring of production. Jalen Hudson, Egor Koulechov, Kerry Blackshear, Colin Castleton, Tyree Appleby, and Anthony Duruji have all enjoyed success in Gainesville, and Gainesville has equally enjoyed the arrangement.
Last year, here at Gator Country I took a stab at predicting the statistical production of Tyree Appleby and Anthony Duruji, traditional transfers who had to redshirt a year following successful stints at Cleveland State and Louisiana Tech.
Ultimately it turned out to be a pretty successful endeavor, as you can see here (depending on how you’re reading this, you may need to click on the tweet to see all the images):
In the preseason I made formulas based on the performance of past Horizon and C-USA transfers to predict the stats of Tyree Appleby and Anthony Duruji. Pretty stoked with how close they were. With so many transfers happening these kinds of predictions could be very useful. pic.twitter.com/K7Yx69bxLj
— Eric Fawcett (@Efawcett7) March 25, 2021
Ultimately for Tyree Appleby the predictions were off by 0.1 points, 0.3 assists, and 0.7 rebounds.
For Anthony Duruji, the predictions were off by 2.1 points, 0.0 assists, and 0.2 rebounds.
Overall, a successful prediction, I’d say.
I came to the statistical predictions by making an algorithm based on every Horizon League (in the case of Appleby) and Conference USA (for Duruji) to high major transfer over the last decade, looking at their statistical production in their previous league and then looking at their production at the high major level. Added weight was added for similar style players and lessened for players on the opposite side of the playing style spectrum.
There were some inputs from me, but largely this was an algorithm based on past performances by similar players to give an informed prediction on what could be expected from Appleby and Duruji. When it comes to thinking basketball, looking at recent history and whatever size of data set you can find is a great way to inform future decisions and predictions, as opposed to making any guesses based on nothing more than feel or narrative.
This year, the Gators have a quartet of D1 transfers. Myreon Jones from Penn State, CJ Felder from Boston College, Phlandrous Fleming from Charleston Southern, and Brandon McKissic from UMKC.
Of course, I had to fire up the old algorithm again, factoring in the four new leagues of course, to see what stats might be expected from these four players.
What makes the practice interesting this year is that the Gators have two players coming from high major leagues. Could Jones’ Big Ten stats and Felder’s ACC stats translate one for one to the SEC? Keep reading to find out!
This year, I added more inputs to the process, this time breaking down each player’s play type data from last year and making a prediction as to what their play type data will be like at Florida. Let me give an example.
At Charleston Southern, Phlandrous Fleming got to be a pick and roll ball handler quite often. Well, at Florida, he’s likely not going to get those same opportunities as he’s more likely to be playing away from the ball. So, I changed his projected usage by lowering the number of pick and roll attempts, and increasing his catch and shoot opportunities.
I won’t go into all the details for each player, but there was more manipulation by me with the statistical inputs this year than last season, since the roles are likely to be changed more in the instance of this year’s transfers than last year’s.
Another thing–this whole system of modeling based on past performance is based on comparing current transfers with similar players of the past decade. Likely, the reason for the accuracy with the Appleby and Duruji predictions is that they were in similar situations to Horizon League and Conference USA transfers of the past decade–they sat out a redshirt year, then stepped into a role next to primarily returning players.
The one-time transfer rule is brand new, and it is completely atypical to have four older, accomplished players all transferring to play right away for a high major basketball team. So, I’m using the statistics of players who transferred from the Big South and Summit League to high major leagues (in the case of Phlandrous Fleming and Brandon McKissic) and Big Ten and ACC to SEC (in the case of Myreon Jones and CJ Felder), but it’s not exactly a fair comparison, given how the landscape has so drastically changed. In a past performance-type model you want similar situations, but Florida’s situation is very unique.
If that sounds like I’m given a preemptive excuse, well…you’re pretty much right. Sure, I’d love for these predictions to be as accurate as last year’s, but the difference in situation probably won’t make that the case.
Still, I put a lot of hours into making the best possible model that would spit out the most accurate predictions, and we will see at the end of the season just how accurate they end up being.
Without further ado, here are the algorithmic predictions for the statistical production of Florida transfers in 2021-22.
Myreon Jones
11.5 Points
1.9 Assists
2.9 Rebounds
0.9 Steals
0.1 Blocks
38.7% Three-Point
29.5 Minutes
CJ Felder
6.3 Points
0.7 Assists
5.2 Rebounds
1.1 Steals
1.6 Blocks
32.1% Three-Point
20.8 Minutes
Phlandrous Fleming
10.5 Points
1.9 Assists
4.1 Rebounds
1.4 Steals
0.6 Blocks
33% Three-Point
25.8 Minutes
Brandon McKissic
7.2 Points
2.3 Assists
3 Rebounds
1.2 Steals
0.1 Blocks
38.2% Three-Point
21.2 Minutes
Well folks, there you have it!
First impressions were that all the stats seem somewhat reasonable–there aren’t any crazy outlier super high or super low numbers, so everything seems realistic.
An overarching theme–statistically it looks like every player is going to be a key rotation piece. When Florida landed each transfer they did fans and media alike praised the commitment as a good get, and the numbers in this prediction back up that the Gators got four very quality and useful pieces. Let’s go briefly through each player’s prediction.
Myreon Jones’ stats aren’t predicted to be exactly what they were at Penn State. Jones averaged 15 points per game while hitting over 40% of his threes, but the model suggests he’ll be just below that. This isn’t a huge dip by any means, and at Penn State he was clearly their best offensive player who had a ton of usage. He shouldn’t be leaned on quite as heavily as Florida, so a slight dip in points wouldn’t be an issue by any means.
When it comes to CJ Felder’s numbers they’re only going to tell part of the story, anyways. As a glue guy, a lot of what he does doesn’t end up in the box score anyways, so I could see this prediction being close, but still not telling the whole story of his season. Felder averaged 9.7 points and 5.9 rebounds per game last season at Boston College so there is a slight dip predicted, but he won’t be relied on as much for offense this year so a dip wouldn’t mean he’s playing worse offensively than he did a year prior.
Phlandrous Fleming was definitely the player whose numbers from the prediction I was most interested in seeing. He was a 20 point per game player in the Big South, but that’s not a great league by any stretch. It’s worth noting that a lot of Big South to high major transfers in the past have ended up being fairly low minute guys, something that definitely makes the average Big South transfer look a bit less effective than players from some other leagues. Mike White has been extremely high on Fleming’s game and I’m told he has been scoring the ball at a high level in practice, so he could certainly end up blowing past the 10.5 point per game prediction.
With Brandon McKissic the thing that jumps out right away to me is that his 42.9% three-point stroke from last season is expected to take a dip down to 38.2%, which is still a great number. The Summit League is known for being a high flying, defense at times optional league, and therefore a lot of players have put up pretty ridiculous numbers in the conference only to see huge declines when they transfer elsewhere. He is still projected to have really solid rotation numbers, but the model isn’t suggesting he’s going to light things up at Florida like he did at UMKC.
What’s encouraging about these predictions is that they seem tempered, yet if they were to all hit these marks it’s likely the Gators would have a fantastic season. That would be four very good seasons for players surrounding Tyree Appleby and Colin Castleton, and a stellar season is expected from freshman Kowacie Reeves alongside a sophomore leap from Niels Lane. Of course, any of these players could also shatter the predictions and go off for much higher production, particularly Phlandrous Fleming and Brandon McKissic who have proved they can score in bunches in the past.
Looking at some past transfers gives us some indication of how the season might go for these four players, though their roles and minute loads are far from being established. Hopefully this gives you somewhat of a baseline as to what can be expected, and if you drastically disagree, I’d love to hear your thoughts on which players you see having much different seasons than the predictions suggest.