Kansas fans are still smiling about Andrew Wiggins’ decision to attend the school. In this edition, I explore how the rest of the Big 12 will look in 2012-13.

For a description of the model that generated these rankings click here.

For an explanation of column headings click here.

Kansas: As I noted on Twitter, if you think Kansas should have a better projection, you may be right. The historic data may not give us an accurate read on Andrew Wiggins. If he is the best high school prospect since LeBron James, that literally means there hasn’t been a comparable freshman in my data. On the other hand, if we can learn something from past freshman phenoms, the lesson is to be careful. In 2010, pundits everywhere claimed that Harrison Barnes was the No. 1 player in the country and one of the greatest prospects on the planet. Then Barnes had such a dreadful freshman season that he stuck around for his sophomore year. And even if Wiggins is great, on a young team with an entirely new starting lineup, there will likely be a few hiccups.

Oklahoma St.: You know your team is headed in the right direction when this is one of your top off-season questions:

Can JUCO center Gary Gaskins replace what Philip Jurick gave Oklahoma St. last year? Jurick wasn’t much of an offensive player, and he was in foul trouble way too often, but he did provide some nice size, shot-blocking, and rebounding when he was on the court.

Yes, the Cowboys return 93% of their offensive possessions on a team that almost won the Big 12 last season. With Markel Brown throwing down more windmill dunks, LeBryan Nash hopefully maturing into his high potential, Michael Cobbins continuing to dominate the paint, and All-American candidate Marcus Smart returning to school, the future is bright.

The only negative piece of news I can find is this. ESPN dropped recruit Detrick Mostella out of its Top 100. (I’m still counting him as a Top 100 recruit until the final consensus rankings are out.)

Baylor: I provided a more detailed summary of Baylor’s lineup last week, but here are a few more thoughts: Losing LJ Rose and Deuce Bello is not a big deal. They had ORtgs of 69 and 86 last year. In fact, Baylor actually moved up from 25th to 24th in my model with the announcement that Rose is gone. He won’t be wasting a handful of possessions in meaningless games this year. And with the recent news that Denver’s Royce O’Neale will be transferring to join the team, Baylor could move even higher. (I want to hear more confirmation that O’Neale will be eligible immediately before I move him into the lineup.)

Iowa St.: Fred Hoiberg just refuses to have a rebuilding year. He has added four JUCO players this off-season. By bringing in transfers three years in a row, he has ensured he has enough veterans to compete each season.

Part of me thinks this is because he is hoping to jump to the NBA. Hoiberg doesn’t want a down-season to wreck his reputation. But if the quick fixes keep working, it is hard to argue with the strategy.

The only real question mark is at PG where freshman Monte Morris has been rising up the recruiting ranks, but still isn’t high enough to be a guaranteed star. Still, with all those JUCO players supporting Georges Niang, Melvin Ejim, and Top 100 prospect Matt Thomas, this team should finish in the top half of the Big 12.

West Virginia: Right now I have West Virginia as the 45th best team in the nation, which would put them squarely on the bubble. But I have complete confidence that Bob Huggins will be back in the tournament. And it isn’t just based on his history of winning. The roster turnover for West Virginia is ideal. Deniz Kilicli, Jabarie Hinds, and Dominque Rutledge had ORtgs of 92, 86, and 84 last year. They were the three least efficient players in the West Virginia lineup. And their departure should hasten the improvement in the West Virginia offense.

I will never understand why Bob Huggins felt so compelled to build his offense around Kilicli. He may have been big and bearded, but he was a poor rebounder, poor finisher, and he had bad hands. Trusting Kilicli was one of Bob Huggins worst decisions at West Virginia.

But Huggins refuses to have another team that lacks interior strength. Huggins is bringing in Top 50 recruit Devin Williams in the paint, two JUCO paint players, and three more freshman forwards. The message is pretty simple. Bob Huggins is tired of his post-play being a liability.

Texas and Kansas St.: I stared at this for awhile, because it surprised me that Texas has a better defensive projection than Kansas St. The bottom line is that the teams had equivalent defenses last year, the coaches have almost identical historical defensive performance (Rick Barnes is seriously under-rated as a defensive coach), and thus it came down to two other factors. First, Texas has more Top 100 recruits. Having athletic players helps on defense as well as offense. Second, Texas returns a larger percentage of its rotation, which should help with continuity.

Still, I suspect Bruce Weber will do even better defensively than what you see here. And he’ll need to given what Kansas St. loses. The Wildcats return just 44 percent of their possessions from last season, and with no elite recruits coming in and no high potential players on the roster, the offense is simply going to take a huge step back.

The Kansas St. player most likely to break out is probably Thomas Gipson. He has been a relatively efficient aggressive player his whole career, and with more playing time, his PPG and RPG numbers should skyrocket.

Shane Southwell and Will Spradling are also quality players, but both have flags that make the model question whether they can become stars. For Southwell, there is a concern whether last year’s hot three point shooting will be sustainable. Southwell suddenly jumped from being a guy who couldn’t buy a three pointer to a 44 percent three point shooter last year, and there may be some regression. And Spradling was super-efficient, but rarely shot. It isn’t clear whether Spradling can maintain his efficiency while taking a larger role on the team.

But even if the Kansas St. offense falls off dramatically, the Texas offense still looks worse on paper. Returning Top 100 recruits Cameron Ridley, Prince Ibeh, Javan Felix, and Jonathan Holmes should make some progress. But even if they do, this still won’t be a good offensive team.

Oklahoma: The Big 12 is really becoming the land of JUCO transfers this year. When Amath M’Baye unexpectedly declared for the draft, Lon Kruger realized he would be starting over in the paint and brought in three JUCO big men to try to fill the void. But I’m surprised he didn’t bring in a JUCO transfer at the PG position. With Sam Grooms departing, there is a real empty spot at that position too. Isaiah Cousins has the highest assist rate of any returning guard, but he struggled with turnovers. And that probably means that unranked freshman Jordan Woodard will be asked to run the show. Without high potential players in the paint or at the PG spot, there just isn’t a lot of upside for this team. The model projects them to win five less conference games than a year ago.

Texas Tech: I stared at the Texas Tech projection for awhile because it really doesn’t make sense to me. Certainly, I expect Tubby Smith to turn Texas Tech’s defense around. For Texas Tech’s defense to improve to 102.7 seems like a cakewalk. But I was puzzled that the model is so optimistic about Texas Tech’s offense. Basically, this is a case of addition by subtraction. The only key player Texas Tech loses is Josh Gray.* And Gray used way too many possessions (15 of 80 from 3) for an inefficient player (81 ORtg) while running the point for the Red Raiders. Of course backup PG Daylen Robinson wasn’t any better (70 ORtg). And you can see why Tubby Smith’s first move at Texass Tech was to go sign a JUCO PG in Robert Turner. Turner may not have major upside, but his job should simply be to get the ball to the other players and stop wasting possessions. Jaye Crocket, Jordan Tolbert, Dejan Kravic, and Dusty Hannahs may not have been good players, but they were average. And just making sure the team gets an average shot each possession will be a serious upgrade from last season.

Of course, to some degree the model may be falling for the “bad shot fallacy.” I.e., when a team runs its offense and can’t get a good shot, the PG often ends up jacking up threes as the shot-clock expires. Josh Gray wasn’t the only bad player on the team last year. But with a new coach and most players back, some upward trajectory is certainly possible.

*Ty Nurse is also gone but he almost never shot the basketball.

TCU: It feels like TCU should be making a bigger move in the right direction. Kyan Anderson was a remarkably solid PG on a dreadful offensive team. Devonta Abron looks like he might be a legitimate Big 12 post player. Meanwhile transfer Karviar Shepherd is the first consensus Top 100 freshman to attend TCU since at least 2000. But TCU was an absolutely dreadful D1 team last year. And with only 44% of the teams minutes returning, the Horned Frogs will be breaking in a bunch of new unranked players again next year. When transfer Trey Ziegler joins the team in 2014-2015, there might be some real upward mobility. Until then expect more of the same.

Trent Johnson accepted the head coaching job at TCU this spring, a program transitioning to the Big 12. Johnson previously spent four years at Stanford and four years at LSU. Because the last three years at LSU were less successful, Johnson may have been looking to change jobs before he lost his job. But in looking back at his experience at Stanford and LSU, I am not convinced he was a worse coach at LSU.

The first thing I notice when looking at the players he recruited at both schools is how big a difference one or two players can make. Johnson’s recruiting at LSU was not substantially worse than his recruiting at Stanford, but Johnson was never able to recruit a superstar freshman to LSU of Brook Lopez's caliber. Brook was a high volume, efficient scorer, and the only thing that stopped him from playing more minutes his first season was an early season surgery. But other than Brook Lopez, Johnson hasn’t had any program changing recruits at either school. Anthony Hickey and Robin Lopez were fine freshmen, but they were not truly elite players in their first season.

One place Johnson caught up on recruiting at LSU was in accepting transfers:

In terms of player development, Johnson’s numbers aren’t that different at the two schools. In the next two tables, I look at changes in playing time and efficiency for all returning players. For inherited players, the change in minutes is the difference between the most recent season and the last season under the previous coach. For recruited players, the change in minutes is the difference between the most recent season and the player’s debut season with the team.

I also compare the change in ORtg for the same time period. But since shot volumes can impact efficiency, I adjust this based on the rule that 1% more possession’s used is worth 1.25 points of efficiency. Thus a player that moves from shooting 20% of the time to 24% of the time and keeps the same efficiency tallies a five point increase in his ORtg.

Once again, the player development numbers are not particularly different at the two schools. In both cases, Johnson has been able to take some players who were incredibly inefficient as freshmen (see Mitch Johnson at Stanford and Aaron Dotson at LSU) and turn them into passable major conference players. And plenty of other players from Chris Hernandez to Chris Johnson regressed slightly under Johnson.

So if Johnson was a similar recruiter at the two schools and had similar success at player development, why was his offense so terrible at LSU? There are really two reasons. First, Johnson had substantially more turnover at LSU. Some of that was by design after his recruiting classes flopped miserably, but with little continuity, his players were never put in a position to succeed.

But equally important was the difference in what he inherited. At LSU, Johnson inherited two senior stars (Marcus Thornton and Chris Johnson) and few other efficient players. And once Thornton and Johnson graduated, LSU’s performance fell off a cliff.  But the team he inherited from Mike Montgomery at Stanford was much deeper with efficient players throughout the lineup.

But here is the ultimate problem for Trent Johnson. He does not appear to be recruiting at the level consistent with an NCAA tournament coach. He seems to do a fine job developing players, but he needs to start with good players for that to be an NCAA tournament equation.

And at TCU, despite huge strides in the last year under Jim Christian, there simply isn’t the kind of talent that will typically make the NCAA tournament in a major conference. Even if Johnson does a great job bringing his current players along, that won’t be enough for an NCAA bid. TCU needs a coach who can upgrade the caliber of player in the program, and right now Johnson doesn’t appear to have the track record to do that.

A lot of coaches can make up for a lack of talented offensive players by teaching their players to play elite defense. For example, Bruce Weber and Frank Martin are always going to be on the NCAA tournament bubble by virtue of their defense alone. But Johnson isn’t quite that consistent at teaching defense:

One thing that really seems to make a difference for Johnson’s defensive scheme is having a 7 footer in the middle. His Stanford teams were at their best when they had Brook or Robin Lopez in the middle. And even this year, while Justin Hamilton was not an elite shot-blocker, his size in the middle frustrated numerous LSU opponents. Probably the most likely avenue for Johnson to succeed at TCU will be to find a few more 7 foot post players to anchor his defense, and hope to find a few special offensive players.

Bottom Line

Joining a BCS league can be a recipe for a complete disaster. Last year, Utah had a horrendous season because the caliber of talent on hand was not ready to compete in the Pac-12. (And it was a down year in the Pac-12). I think Johnson is skilled enough to keep TCU from having a disastrous season. He will bring his players along and he now has the experience to motivate players through a difficult season.

But TCU fans will be excited about the jump up to a major conference and expectations will be raised. Johnson won’t be expected to make the NCAA tournament next year, but he will be expected to make the tournament in three or four years. And the historical numbers suggest Johnson will need substantially better recruiting to make that happen.

This spring South Carolina hired Frank Martin and Kansas St. hired Bruce Weber to replace him. I’ve written a lot of words about Martin and Weber in the past. Martin is one of the best coaches at teaching offensive rebounding in the nation. Weber’s teams are constantly competitive but struggle in close games due to an offense that fails to get free throw attempts. Weber’s teams win with some of the best man-to-man defense in the nation. But Frank Martin’s defense is almost equally good. In fact, their tempo free stats were nearly identical at their previous schools:

Martin’s teams were more consistent. His worst team was 44th in the nation in the Pomeroy Rankings, while Weber’s worst team was last year’s Illinois squad which finished 73rd. But Weber’s team achieved a higher peak reaching the national championship in 2005.

Overall these are both incredibly “safe” moves for the two universities to make. Even in their worst seasons, Martin and Weber are going to be in the hunt for an NCAA tournament bid. But what will it take for these coaches to reach a new higher level with their new schools? To answer that question, let’s take a look back.

A Quick Trip Down Memory Lane

First let’s look at how freshmen have performed under each coach. The thing that stands out for Bruce Weber is how terribly inefficient his freshmen have been. This lack of efficiency is startling given the large number of Top 100 recruits Illinois has had on the roster the last few seasons. DJ Richardson had a fabulous freshmen campaign, but over the years, very few of Bruce Weber’s players have been efficient in their first year. (The exceptions tend to be solid three point shooters like Jamar Smith and Tyler Griffey.) Demetri McCamey’s freshmen year was widely praised because of a few huge games, but a 92.7 ORtg while using only 22% of the possessions when on the floor was far from spectacular.

Fr Year = Freshmen Year

PctMin = Percentage of Minutes Played

ORtg = Offensive Rating, Points Produce Per 100 Possessions

PctPoss = Percentage of Possession’s Used when on the Floor

*Bertrand and Carter didn’t even use 25 possessions as freshmen (and Bertrand was a redshirt!)

The next table shows freshmen under Frank Martin. Once again there are a handful of efficient three point shooters (see McGruder and Spradling), but other than Michael Beasley, Frank Martin hasn’t exactly been producing dominant rookies. But the difference between Weber and Martin is that freshmen are rarely horrible under Martin. The lowest ratings under Martin are not nearly as low as the lowest ratings under Weber.

It isn’t about playing time. Martin has given his freshmen more minutes and seen steadier production. And it isn’t all about Michael Beasley. Even without the big man, Martin’s players would be substantially more efficient and earn more minutes on average.

I think the key is style of play. Bruce Weber’s runs a precision shooting-based offense, and few first-year players have the skill set to pull it off. Meanwhile Frank Martin often gets players to fight like crazy for offensive rebounds right off the bat. Frank Martin knows how to teach players a physical style of basketball in a relatively short period of time. And that is great news for South Carolina fans. With a few strong post players, South Carolina can be competitive again in year one.

Though not listed, both coaches gave playing time to seven transfers at their previous school and again Martin’s transfers debuted as the more efficient players. Martin’s incoming transfers played similar minutes to Weber’s transfers, but since Martin has used seven transfers in only five years, Martin obviously recruits and uses transfers more frequently.

Player Development

In the next two tables I look at changes in playing time and efficiency for all returning players. The change in minutes is the difference between the most recent season and the debut season. For inherited players, the change in minutes is the difference between the most recent season and the last season under the previous coach.

I also compare the change in ORtg for the same time period. But since shot volumes can impact efficiency, I adjust this based on the rule that 1% more possession’s used is worth 1.25 points of efficiency. Thus a player that moves from shooting 20% of the time to 24% of the time and keeps the same efficiency tallies a 5 point increase in his ORtg.

I love the table for Bruce Weber because it shows what all college coaches try to do. The seven players with the greatest leaps in minutes played were also among the players with the greatest jumps in efficiency. From Meyers Leonard to Luther Head, the off-season improvement translated into a major increase in playing time.

Meanwhile players that saw their efficiency fall often saw their minutes slip. Nick Smith treaded water on an improving Illinois team and rode the bench. Richard Semrau had medical issues and failed to earn more playing time.

They may have been recruited by Bill Self, but Luther Head, James Augustine, and Deron Williams all improved significantly under Bruce Weber. But Dee Brown’s senior year under Weber was about as effective as his freshmen year under Bill Self. Brown used 5% more possession when on the floor as a senior, but he saw his efficiency fall by almost 7%.

In the next table, I show the player changes for Frank Martin. At first glance, Frank Martin seems to come out ahead of Bruce Weber. After starting at a higher level, Martin’s players show comparable improvements. Even if you throw out Darren Kent, (whose terrible sophomore year under Bob Huggins was more small sample size than anything), the average improvement under Martin is almost as much as the average improvement under Weber.

So what is happening? Why isn’t Martin’s offense substantially superior? If Martin gets substantially better first year performances, and has nearly as many players improve, why isn’t Martin an elite offensive coach? There are really two problems. First, Martin has used more transfers and had more players transfer. That additional roster turnover has meant less time for player development. But the second factor is a little more complex:

The critical fact is that Martin hasn’t been able to assign playing time based on improvement in play.  Rodney McGruder, Dominque Sutton, Fred Brown, and Will Spradling were all solid players as freshmen. They seemed to deserve more playing time as their careers went on. But none of those players took the next step forward. They’ve all earned more minutes because they were good, but no one took the next step and became a superstar.

Instead what you have seen is that the ineffective reserve players have improved under Frank Martin from year-to-year. Backup guard Shane Southwell improved from a horrible to bad passer, and backup guard Martavious Irving improved from a bad to decent three point shooter, but improvements aren’t that critical when they happen for back-up players.

Bottom Line: Bruce Weber’s motion offense takes time. Almost no one steps in and can run it with smooth consistency as a rookie. It doesn’t even matter if you are a top 100 recruit – odds are you will struggle to master the skills in the first year. But Bruce Weber is great at identifying returning players whose skill set has improved and riding those players. From Deron Williams to Warren Carter to Demetri McCamey, Weber always seems to maximize the minutes for his most improved players.

The best thing you can say about Weber is that he usually has the right lineup on the floor. The worst thing you can say is that even with the right lineup, his motion offense often fails. Near the end of his tenure at Illinois, Weber talked about how he was too obsessed with winning now, but that was actually his greatest strength. But rather than wishing that Brandon Paul had been tougher, I think Bruce Weber should look in the mirror and ask a tougher question. If so many players struggle with his “jump-shooting” offense, is it the right offense? Or like John Calipari, should Bruce Weber re-invent his offense to better match the type of personnel he typically manages to recruit?

For Frank Martin, I wouldn’t curse the lack of player development too much. Sometimes getting a player to reach his potential early looks like a lack of player development.  Martin got Dominique Sutton and Rodney McGruder to play well as rookies.  But Sutton was always an under-sized forward, and probably couldn’t get any better in the Big 12. And McGruder was not a consensus Top 100 recruit out of high school (although Rivals and ESPN tagged him as such). McGruder may simply lack the athleticism to become a true college superstar.

But if good players don’t become stars, how can Martin’s team truly compete at the highest level?  The physical offensive play will be enough to make South Carolina relevant again. But Martin had a transcendent college player in Jacob Pullen and he did not make the Final Four or win a Big 12 title. The challenge at South Carolina won’t be winning, but to reach new goals. And it will start by finding a way to develop solid players into efficiency superstars.