West Coast Convo
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Haws Headlines Sports Illustrated’s Top Projected Scorers

By Mark Kramer

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Sports Illustrated has been posting some great content recently previewing the college basketball season including an some interesting stat projections. In October they released a great piece projecting the top players points, rebounds, and assists. It’s a great read in large part because of how impressively dominant the WCC is on the lists. In fact the WCC has the top player in two of those categories and the number two player in the other.

The projections are compiled by Economist Dan Hanner using a variety of variables. The model simulates the season 10,000 to minimize outliers and gives a very sound projection of various statistical rankings for both teams and individual. This is no personal opinion, real data projects some of the WCC’s best players to be among the best in the nation.

The highlight is of course Tyler Haws being projected as the top scorer, and by a wide margin. He is projected to put up 24.6 points per game, well ahead of the 20 per game projected for second place. After putting up 23.2 points per game last season, going over 24 per game is very doable for the BYU star. With a very weak frontcourt causing the Cougars to rely on Haws and fellow star Kyle Collinsworth helping relieve some pressure in the backcourt, everything is set up for Haws to dominate college basketball.

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The WCC also has a number of other players among the projected top 100 scorers. Brad Waldow of Saint Mary’s and Brandon Clark and Jared Brownridge of Santa Clara are all in the top 20 as all three are projected to put up 17.4 points per game. Evan Payne of Loyola Marymount comes it a 21 with 17.2 points per game, Johnny Dee of San Diego is 26th with 17.1 points per game,  and Stacy Davis of Pepperdine rounds out WCC players in the top 50 coming in at 32nd with 16.3 points per game.

We find even more WCC players in the 50-100 range including Kevin Bailey of Portland (60), Kyle Collinsworth of BYU (62), Kevin Pangos of Gonzaga (73), and Thomas Van der Mars of Portland (84). That’s eleven WCC players among the top scorers in the country.

Even more impressive is the range of teams represented. The players aren’t exclusive to a small group of top teams. A whopping 8 of the 10 WCC teams have players in the top 100, and three have multiple players. And it’s worth noting that of those three teams, two are not from the normal trio of top contenders. It really speaks to the amazing depth of the conference this year with tons of talented players spread across all the teams making for a deep and competitive conference.

Stay tuned as we will dig deeper into the projections including how the WCC is dominating the other major stat categories in the projections.

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