I don’t think there’s a Marshall Henderson equivalent on the roster. I don’t think such a thing exists. What he has are some guys who have played a lot of basketball.
Somehow, Kennedy has managed to go from one senior on last
year’s team to five on the 2014-2015 roster. He went from having just five
upperclassmen to nine. Jarvis Summers, LaDarius White, and Aaron Jones are entering their senior seasons as veterans who have been with the program
since their high school days.
Terrence Smith, M.J. Rhett, Stefan Moody, and Roderick
Lawrence are all new upperclassmen that transferred after graduation or from
junior college.
Kennedy, as evidenced by the past two seasons, is willing to go outside the box to
put together his teams. Some teams can win with freshmen. Kentucky is the prime
example. That requires some high-level recruiting that brings in guys who are
nearly NBA ready. So far, Ole Miss has never shown the ability to recruit that
way in the basketball program. Therefore, Kennedy gets creative.
Smith brings in three years of experience at
Tennessee-Martin, and Rhett brings in the equivalent from Tennessee State.
Moody has one year of experience at Florida Atlantic and one at junior college.
Lawrence played two years in junior college.
So let’s look at some statistics. Here are Andy Kennedy’s 8
seasons as the head coach of Ole Miss. In this table you will see the season,
the years of experience his top 5 scorers had that season, and the winning
percentage of the team at the end of the season. You’ll notice that Kennedy’s team
that won the highest % of games also had the most experience. You’ll also
notice that the team that won the lowest % of games had the fewest years of
experience.
Season Top 5 Scorers’ Years
of Experience Winning %
2012-2013: 17 years experience
2007-2008: 13 years experience
2009-2010: 13 years experience
2006-2007: 16 years experience (.618)
2010-2011: 14 years experience
2011-2012: 14 years experience
2013-2014: 14 years experience
2008-2009: 9 years experience
I’ll admit that the correlation isn’t perfect. In fact, the
Pearson Correlation Coefficient Calculator calculates the value of R to be
0.6243. -1 would be a perfectly negative correlation, and 1 would be a
perfectly positive correlation. Any R-value between .5 and .7 is considered a
moderate to strong positive relationship. I won't post the graph here, but it does indicate a linear relationship. That’s for those of you who are like
me and don’t do too well with anything math related.
So if you trust stats more than professional
evaluations of
ability and potential, then this should get you at least a little
excited about
the upcoming basketball season. It appears that there is tremendous potential. Of course there are still so many
questions, but I’m looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.
By Tyler Slay (@slaytyler)
By Tyler Slay (@slaytyler)