Kendall Marshall: Why I Hate You

When the grief is over, beef is over/
I'll be fly when Easter's over

The All-ACC teams came out last week, and in what should not have nearly been a surprise to any Maryland fan who has paid attention to the ACC, Terrell Stoglin did not make the first team, despite leading the league in scoring by three and a half points. In fact, he wasn't even the top vote getter among those who didn't make first team - more on that in a minute. Perhaps only moderately more surprising was the fact that no one really said two words about this snub. Don't get me wrong, I think there were valid cases to be made against Stoglin's inclusion. He was by far the best scorer in the league, but he didn't do a lot of the other things that players need to do well, and he played for a bad team, albeit something that was only tangentially related to his play at any given time. In any event, he would have been a more than valid selection, and if the name on the jersey were different but the performance the same, he'd have been there.

However what gets me is that there was an uproar over the picks. Commentators were absolutely up in arms that Kendall Marshall didn't make the first team. The Andy Katzes and Seth Davises of the world seemed aghast. This guy is a first team All-America, of course he should have been first team all conference! So is this a travesty? Nope. Let's turn it down a few thousands notches, kids.

Kendall Marshall is, first of all, a spectacular passer. Make no mistake that as much as I hate him, he makes some superlative passes. The trouble is that once you get past that, there isn't a whole lot there. Marshall, despite a few big games in the past two or three weeks, has yet to show himself to be a capable scorer at just 7.4 points a game. The typical rejoinder to this is that he's a "true" point guard (whatever that means), that he doesn't need to score, and that he doesn't try to show what he can do because his job is to pass. While it's certainly true that he does have a role as a facillitator, that's not the whole story.

Marshall takes just 10.8% of his team's shots while on the court - basically half of what an average player would take. Of the ACC's 73 regular (approx. 16 minutes a game) players, only Duke's Tyler Thornton ranks lower. It's one thing not to shoot very much and to be a pass first distributor, but it's quite another to shoot so infrequently as to take yourself out of the equation almost entirely against a good defensive team. And more to the point, Marshall isn't very effective on those occasions when he does shoot, hitting under 50% of his two point shots, about 33% from three (with less than one make a game), and only 71% from the stripe. Those numbers aren't awful, but considering how rarely he does shoot, that ought to mean he's picking his shots and taking the very highest percentage shots that he can get.

Then there's the matter of defense. Kendall Marshall pretty simply doesn't play much of it. You only have to watch the games to see that he has trouble matching up against more skilled guards. This is another area where Marshall's team helps him out. He has the luxury of having an outstanding shot blocking front court to erase mistakes when guards get past him and attack the rim, which is not exactly a rare occurence. Look at when Marshall matched up with Faust yesterday. Nick didn't have his best shooting performance of the season at 4-13, but he was able to get past his man and into the lane almost at will when he had the favorable matchup with Marshall. He does get a decent amount of steals, but that's not nearly enough to overcome the fact that he's the weak link defensively in his backcourt and on the team.

Marshall is also a poor rebounder, finishing 67/73 in defensive rebounding and 72/73 in offensive rebounding. Some of this is because of his position, but his numbers do not compare favorably to recent UNC point guards like Lawson and Felton neither of whom were "big" guards.

So what you're left with are the assists, and those numbers are great, but even then, they need context. Marshall plays on an ultra-talent offensive team that runs up and down the court, giving him copious opportunities to drop dimes. No doubt, if the offense is a car, Marshall is a great driver, but he also got handed the keys to a Ferrari, not a Ford Escort. His big men are also outstanding at running the floor and beating their man, giving the opportunity for Marshall to find them for an easy one past the defense if he keeps his head up. Not every PG can make those passes or have that vision, but even the good ones will be able to do it pretty often.

Anyway, Marshall doesn't really lead the country in assists despite all of that. He's second behind Scott Machado. If you look at Assist percentage, the percentage of his team's baskets a player records an assist on while on the floor, Marshall falls even further to sixth in the country. Still spectacular, but hardly quite as record setting when you look at a number that accounts more fully for Marshall playing 38 minutes a game these days with outstanding teammates in an up and down the court offense.

I've been watching the ACC for a long time, and Marshall is a very good point guard. So was Ed Cota. But does anyone really think that Marshall is a overall player than recent point guards like Steve Blake, Raymond Felton, Ty Lawson, Greivis Vasquez, Chris Paul, Stephon Marbury, Nolan Smith, or Jay Williams, not to mention dozens of others? Not being in that category doesn't make Marshall a bad player, but it does mean he's not an elite one.

Now I may be a little biased. I'll admit that I don't like Marshall. Really the problem is that I don't like seeing his fat, ugly father on my television screen. His fat, ugly father had the audacity to tell a tall tale about how Gary failed to give Marshall the time of day when he was a recruit despite it being clear to anyone with an interest in recruiting that Marshall's fat, ugly father would never in a million years have considered sending him to Maryland, regardless of the staff's level of effort or whether he was good enough to go to UNC and play the point.

I'll be interested to see what happens next year if Marshall comes back without the services of Barnes, Henson, and Zeller. Maybe he'll prove me wrong, but I doubt it.

College Basketball Boxer Report 11/24

This is the PREMIERE EDITION of the College Basketball Boxer Report! Why is it called that, you ask? Because it's being written as I sit here in my boxers having just watched the Terps beat Delaware State. Pants are far too formal for this blog post!

Anyway, the Terps are 4-2, having lost the games you'd expect them to lose while winning the others (though not without some hariy moments against the College of Charleston). Now that we're about 1/5 of the way through the season, let's look at the players - who is playing well and who is pissing me off enough to want to launch my cell phone through the TV.

So far Cliff Tucker has been excellent. He's winning acclaim for his defense and has scored in double figures every game. His outside shooting looks solid and his midrange game looks Dixonian when the Flex offense gets going. It's still too early to say he's headed for an All-ACC season (he doghoused himself late against Illinois), but he has been as good as could be hoped for. Jordan has also been spectacular, but that goes without saying. Even though he started slow in the Coaches vs Cancer games in MSG, he still managed a double double on both nights due to his second half performances.

The other starters have been up and down. Bonecrusher has outright sucked for most of the season aside from the Seattle game. He looks slow and lethargic which is the most disappointing part. Bowie has been more Adrian than Anthony this season, scoring in double figures just once while carrying an unacceptable A/TO ratio. Dino Gregory started off slow but has put together back to back outstanding games (10/10 against Illinois and 14/8 against Delaware State) while averaging 2 blocks a game.

The freshman have, of course, been up and down. Stoglin looks like a gunner - but mostly in a good way. I'm sold on him as a future big time scorer because with some guys you can just see they have the skill and the lack of conscience needed to put points on the board. Pe'shon Howard had that game winner in his second game, and while he hasn't exactly followed it up, he's been fine for a guy six games into his career. Hawk Palsson has no position but looks like he has a high basketball IQ. Berend Weijs has played pretty well for a stick figure and might be taking some of Padgett's minutes if the Inspector doesn't turn it on. It's not that Padge has been bad, it's just...he hasn't been particularly good either. I'm perfectly indifferent to all aspects of his performance aside from his odd gait which makes him look about 90 years old. That I do hate.

So all that being said, it's easy to be optimistic. That's because the ACC absolutely sucks. It's putrid. It might be the worst thing ever, and even then it may not even qualify as a thing. Is AIDS a thing? I don't know.

Duke is going to be awesome and give Dickie V many, many orgasms this season, but after that, it's questionable at best. UNC, for all their undue preseason hype, lost two games in Puerto Rico to Vandy and Minnesota. Both are solid teams, but if North Carolina wants to live up to the ranking and the name on the jersey, they absolutely have to win one of those. Virginia Tech, another presumed top three team, got handled pretty well by Kansas State. NC State's freshmen look good, but they also lost by a fairly comfortable margin to Georgetown in their tournament this weekend. Virginia lost by over 40 to Washington in Maui last night. Wake Forest has already lost to Stetson, VCU, and Winthrop. Boston College lost to Yale. Georgia Tech got handled by double digits at Kennesaw State. Rutgers crushed Miami. Like I said, it's ugly, and even with two losses in NYC, the Terps have passed the Look Test better than most of the teams besides Duke and perhaps FSU, which hasn't been tested yet against weak competition.

Something I realized last night is that I love John Cal. Sports is theater, and it's fun to have a bad guy to root against. As far as villains go, John Cal is somewhere between The Joker and Hans Gruber. It's one thing that he's a cheating scumbag. There are plenty of those, from Jim Calhoun to Bruce Pearl, and I hate them. On the other hand, John Calipari is so blatant and over the top with it that you can't help but respect it. The NCAA pretty clearly won't do anything but "strip" him of his Final Fours and wins, so why not just do whatever you have to do to win? I bring this all up because Kentucky just beat Washington behind 16/17 from freshman Terrance Jones, a guy that Cal pretty much stole right out from under Washington after Jones had committed there. Gotta love it.

Kemba Walker is much the best player I've seen so far this season. Granted that he's only been in four games so far, but he's averaging over 30 a night for UConn. That will come down, but it's pretty crazy. He scored over 40 once already and had an insane game yesterday where he almost singlehandedly led UConn over Wichita State.

There were only 64 undefeated teams coming into tonight according to kenpom. God I love kenpom. And speaking of kenpom. his rankings (which also factor in a preseason forecast) have the Terps at 31st in the nation. Not too shabby. He's also giving Duke a 1-in-20 shot at going undefeated through the end of the regular season.

How is Kansas State a top 5 team? They just got beaten easily by Duke and struggled with Presbyterian - the mighty BLUE HOSE. Frank Martin pretty much strikes me as a guy whose greatest talent in life is getting perilously close to an anuerysm and/or killing a player over every minor infraction, plus losing Denis Clemente has to hurt them. Sure, they beat VT, and sure, the top tier is wide open behind Duke especially with Robbie Hummell's knee being died again, but it doesn't seem like they're going to repeat last year's success. At least I hope not with three of their key players coming from DC (what up Dalonte Hill?!)

And that's that.