Most experts seem to have Louisville in their preseason Top 10 next year. And because people need to justify that ranking, between now and November you are going to be hearing a lot about Louisville recruit, point guard Chris Jones. Jones is the top junior college player in the country, and everyone is saying he will be an instant impact recruit. (Besides Chris Jones, some of the other top JUCO recruits this year include SMU’s Yanick Moreira, Marquette’s Jameel McKay, and Missouri’s Keanau Post.)

But what is a reasonable expectation for a top JUCO recruit? For many of us, we simply want to see Jones play before we draw any conclusions. Scouting is hugely important, and I wouldn’t be watching the Jordan Brand Classic and writing about it, if I didn’t see value in watching players and picturing how they will fit into an offense.

But if you want to look at the historical stats and use those to predict how Chris Jones might play, that is what today’s column is all about.  But before I share those numbers, let me point out that the biggest problem with junior college players is attrition. JUCO players are systematically more likely to have problems with eligibility, systematically more likely to withdraw at the start of the school year, and systematically more likely not to make it through the entire season. I thought this post by John Templon of NYBuckets summed it up rather nicely. Below I am only presenting the numbers for players that enrolled successfully and played more minutes than a typical walk-on. Only 77% of Top 100 JUCO players met this criteria, meaning my sample suffered a 23% attrition rate. Because of this, the most important hurdle for Louisville may be making sure Chris Jones is on the court on November 1^st.

Second, I think it is important to set a baseline for expectations for incoming players. I’m going to use freshmen as that baseline. The next table is a recreation of a table Luke Winn made a few years ago, measuring the first year impact of various freshmen. The only difference here is that I am using 11 years of data, from 2003 to 2013. Remarkably, the expectations are quite similar in the expanded data set.

Occasionally, a team of freshmen come together and dominate from Day 1, but this year’s Michigan squad was definitely an outlier. More realistically, only the highest rated freshmen tend to come in and dominate the first year they step on campus.

Now, in last year’s preseason rankings, I didn’t do much with the JUCO data. About the only fact I used was this one: From 2005 to 2013, JUCO transfers into Power programs have performed better than JUCO transfers into smaller programs.

I typically view JUCO players as emergency fill-ins. A JUCO player can come in and get you a 97.0 ORtg on average, which is better than the 94.3 for an unranked freshman. But it isn’t a lot better.

When I published my preseason rankings last year, one of the initial suggestions I received was that I should use the JUCO Top 100 data and see if it provided some additional information with which to form expectations. As it turns out, over 80% of the JUCO players enrolling in Power 6 conferences were ranked in the JUCO Top 100. (An example of a JUCO player outside the Top 100 at a major program would be Cincinnati’s David Nyarsuk.)  I have now coded that Top 100 data, and the next table shows how the JUCO Top 100 have fared in their debut seasons. For 2011 and 2012, I am using the JUCO rankings found on Jucorecruiting.com. From 2007-2010, I am using the JUCO rankings created by Juco Junction, a division of rivals.com.

I didn’t break out the Top 100 further because the variance for these players is huge. Using six years of data, none of the tiers of data are statistically significantly different from one another. To put it another way, when you plot efficiency relative to the JUCO ranking, the data is virtually a scatter plot. There are players at all points in the rankings with efficiency ratings below 90 and above 110. I’m not completely sure why the JUCO rankings have so little predictive power. It could be the differences in competition, the lower quality of scouting, or simply the different circumstances these players walk into. (I.e. a JUCO player matriculating at Texas Tech and Marquette probably faces a substantially different probability of success.)

That said, I think it is fair to say the Top 10 JUCO recruits look very similar to freshmen recruits ranked 21-30 out of high school. If you want to set your expectation for Chris Jones at 101.5 based on this data, that seems reasonable.

You might argue that my Top 10 cut-off is too wide. Maybe if I just focused on the Top 5 or Top 3, we would get an even higher expectation for a player like Chris Jones. But the data don’t really support that. If we cut off players ranked 6-10, we cut out some of the best JUCO players to go D1. You would be dropping Mississippi’s Marshall Henderson (#10 in 2012) and LSU’s Marcus Thornton(#6 in 2007) among others. And unfortunately, a number of players near the top of the JUCO rankings have bombed badly. Do you remember that Mario Little and Tyrone Appleton were ranked #1 and #3 in the JUCO rankings before attending Kansas in 2009? They did nothing. The #2 JUCO recruit in 2007 Nemanja Calasan had a dreadful 88.1 ORtg for Purdue. The #2 JUCO recruit in 2011 Kansas St.’s Freddy Asprilla was little better at 91.2.

Wichita St.’s Cleanthony Early (#2 in 2013), Missouri’s Ricardo Ratliffe (#1 in 2011), and Baylor’s Pierre Jackson (#1 in 2012) were all brilliant college players. So there are clearly some success stories. But do not let the positive outcomes for those players cause you to be overly optimistic about Louisville’s Chris Jones. Because for every Pierre Jackson, there is 2012 #2 JUCO Nurideen Lindsey, who posted an 83.8 ORtg before transferring out of St. John’s. I should also add that PG is notoriously the hardest position to play well immediately.

Probably the best thing Louisville’s Chris Jones has going for him is that Rick Pitino believes in him. If Pitino thinks he can compete and possibly start immediately, expectations should be pretty high. At this point, I see Jones as having a slightly higher expected value than Louisville’s other incoming PG, Terry Rozier. Rozier was the #75 RSCI recruit out of high school before spending a year at prep school. But I would expect them both to play. My model has Jones playing 55% of the minutes and Rozier playing 45% of the minutes.

Without Russ Smith, my predictions model currently has Louisville 15^th nationally. With Russ Smith, my model would now have Louisville 3^rd, behind only Kentucky (with the greatest recruiting class of all time) and Michigan St. (assuming Adreian Payne and Gary Harris return.) 15^th may seem unreasonably low, but remember that Russ Smith was Ken Pomeroy’s player of the year as the most important tempo free player, so obviously his loss is going to hurt in any model that relies on tempo free stats. Personally, I think 15^th may be a little low. But it all comes down to what you are trying to measure. My model has Iowa slightly ahead of Louisville right now. Iowa almost certainly has less of a chance of being an elite team or national title contender than Louisville. But Iowa had the 23^rd best margin-of-victory numbers last year, returns basically its entire rotation, and has little chance of a disastrous season. I think most people tend to make their predictions at least partly based on upside, and I won’t argue with Louisville in the 8-12 range in most people’s rankings.

Overall, the top JUCO recruits can be dominant players. But much like freshmen recruits outside the Top 20, there are no guarantees.

Last fall on Basketball Prospectus I introduced the first ever lineup-based predictions model. Even -though I intend to make improvements to the model over the summer, since I already have the programming code written, today I wanted to rerun the first version of the model and see what it tells us about the 2013-2014 season.

The biggest problem is guessing which players will declare for the draft. I haven’t seen an official announcement for Nerlens Noel or Shabazz Muhammad, but I think it is clear they are both leaving. I also assume that anyone who can make this year’s lottery would be foolish not to leave. Thus I assume Ben McLemore, Marcus Smart, Victor Oladipo, Otto Porter, and Trey Burke are gone. Michael Carter-Williams never struck me as an obvious lottery choice this year, but the consensus seems to be that the scouts like his size and NCAA tournament play, so I project him as leaving.  Similarly a slew of big guys seem likely to go pro from Gorgui Dieng, to Cody Zeller, to Alex Len, to Kelly Olynyk.

Notably, I’m not going to assume Doug McDermott and Russ Smith come back. I understand there isn’t much more they can accomplish in college, but based on the draft projections I have seen, neither player is guaranteed to be a first round pick right now.  I think that if you are not certain to get a guaranteed contract in the NBA, the risk of leaving is pretty high. Thus I’m going to assume these players return, even though that may be a dubious conclusion.

 Key:

Pred Off, Pred Def, Pred Pythag: The predicted points scored and allowed per 100 possessions, and predicted winning percentage against an average D1 team on a neutral floor.

Returning Minutes, Possessions: The loss of high possession players can be a larger detriment to the offense, thus I list percentage of returning possessions in addition to returning minutes.

T100: Number of players who were Top 100 recruits out of high school. People focus on Top 100 freshmen, but Top 100 players are also more likely to become breakout stars later in their career.

Last Pythag: Last year’s Pythagorean winning percentage according to Kenpom.com. This is essentially a measure of each team’s margin-of-victory in 2012-13.

Kentucky: The Wildcats have the most talent by far, and the most NBA potential, by far. The only question is time. Can John Calipari teach such a wide array of talent to play together in one year? In three of his four years, John Calipari has managed to get the Wildcats to play elite defense. The model hedges its bets and says the defense might not come together that quickly. (The fact that defense-lacking Kyle Witjer is still going to play meaningful minutes is also a concern.) But with all those Top 20 recruits, and all those highly ranked returning sophomores, it is very hard to predict anything other than a special offensive team.

Michigan St.: I’m assuming Gary Harris is coming back based on Tom Izzo’s comments. When a Top 10 Big Ten squad returns basically all its key players, it is hard not to have high expectations. Kenny Kaminski will be healthy. Denzel Valentine and Matt Costello both remain high potential guys who should see a sophomore leap in efficiency. And Harris, Keith Appling, Branden Dawson, and Adreian Payne are as good a returning set of four starters as you will find. Michigan St. might not be the most talented team in the country, but they have fewer lineup questions than just about anyone.

North Carolina: The Tar Heels will be back. The two biggest lineup issues this year were point-guard and one of the forward slots.  We already saw glimpses of point guard Marcus Paige’s improved play late in the year and he should be a star in year two. I can’t tell you exactly who will develop as a post compliment to James McAdoo, but someone will. Whether it will be freshman Isaiah Hicks or Kennedy Meeks, or (after a summer of working out in the gym) Brice Johnson or Joel James, the Tar Heels have four former elite high school post players to choose from. At least one of them will be ready. Overall, North Carolina has more Top 100 talent than anyone else.

Louisville: With players like Montrezl Harrell playing well in limited time this year, Louisville has a chance to go to the Final Four again. But this high ranking depends on Russ Smith’s return. Without Smith, the team will be putting a heavy burden on incoming freshman point guard Terry Rozier. Rozier isn’t in this year’s ESPN’s Top 100 because he needed a year of prep school, but he was a consensus Top 100 recruit last year. RSCI had him 75th.

Florida: Don’t be scared away because the Gators return only 54% of their offense from last year. The Gators add two instant impact recruitsin Kasey Hill and Chris Walker, along with two transfers who were former Top 100 players, Damontre Harris and Dorian Finney-Smith. If the point-guard Hill lives up to his hype, Florida might be even better than last year. They will certainly be deeper.

Michigan: The further development of Mitch McGary, Glen Robinson, and the addition of another stellar recruiting class should help overcome the loss of Trey Burke. But if additional players declare for the draft, Michigan’s expectations could slip.

Arizona: My gut tells me Arizona may be a little too low here. Arizona loses a lot of production, but they have the right pieces coming in. Point guard TJ McConnell was phenomenal at Duquesne and unlike Mark Lyons, McConnell is more of a natural PG. Aaron Gordon and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson should be instant-impact recruits. And the returning sophomores on the front line should be better in year two. The model is mostly concerned whether Sean Miller can bring together an elite defensive team. Last year was Miller’s best defensive team yet, but it still wasn’t an elite defensive team. Until Miller gets his team to play great defense for a full season, there will always be reasons to be skeptical.

Marquette: Vander Blue, Davante Gardner, and Jamil Wilson are back. Buzz Williams has his best recruiting class yet, and the team should have more Top 100 talent than it has ever had in his tenure. Plus Buzz Williams gets the most out of his players by studying the data and eliminating bad possessions. Still, even if the model likes Marquette as a top 10 team, I am concerned that Williams typically has a short-leash with his freshmen. And if they don’t contribute, Marquette may still lack the talent to be an elite team.

Duke: Quinn Cook hasn’t been dominant yet, but he was a Top 10 recruit out of high school, and he is still a high potential player. Andre Dawkins should return from his sabbatical and paired with Rasheed Sulaimon on the perimeter, the Duke back-court looks strong. In the front-court, Amile Jefferson was a solid offensive player when filling in for Ryan Kelly and Jabari Parker is an instant impact recruit. And don’t overlook Mississippi St. transfer Rodney Hood. Duke loses a lot, but the lineup still looks dominant.

Wisconsin: Once again, a model based on the tempo free numbers loves Bo Ryan’s squad. I’m skeptical, but the lineup does look legitimate next year. Remember Josh Gasser is coming back after missing all of last year with an injury. The team’s most important scorer Ben Brust is back. Frank Kaminsky played well in limited minutes. And most importantly, Sam Dekker might be the best post player Bo Ryan has ever had. Seriously, the Badgers lose 45% of their possessions from last year, and the tempo free model still loves them.

Click here for Teams 11 to 25.

One year after Kentucky completed one of the most dominant seasons in recent memory, their in-state rivals have been breezing through the NCAA Tournament at a similar pace. Louisville’s average margin of victory in the first four rounds was a whopping 21.75 points. They were never seriously threatened in the first two weekends and they’re the clear favorite headed into the Final Four. And while John Calipari had an entire rotation of first round picks and McDonald’s All-Americans last year, Rick Pitino has only one five-star recruit (Chane Behanan) on his roster. Kentucky had the talent to win any type of game; Louisville forces opponents to play their game.

The Cardinals players are just as fast and athletic as the Wildcats, but they aren’t nearly as big. Pitino recruits NBA-caliber athletes and he’s willing to sacrifice NBA-caliber size in the process. Almost everyone has been shifted down a position. They have two 6’0 guards (Peyton Siva and Russ Smith) in the backcourt, a 6’5 shooting guard (Wayne Blackshear) at the 3 and a 6’6 250 combo forward (Behanan) at the four. Gorgui Dieng is their only starter who isn’t undersized. That can be an issue in the half-court, but Pitino’s full-throttle 94-foot press makes it a moot point. Defeating Louisville starts with breaking their press, either by having the stamina to run with them for 40 minutes or the discipline to avoid turning it over.

A Louisville game doesn’t look a lot like the average college basketball game. It’s more like soccer or hockey, with the game almost permanently in semi-transition. Smith and Siva play with a reckless abandon on both ends of the floor, averaging over five turnovers and five ersonal fouls a game. For a coach who values possessions, that much carelessness from your starting backcourt would be unacceptable. Since Pitino knows his defense can manufacture possessions almost at will, it’s the price he’s willing to pay to keep the pressure on. He balances his line-ups by keeping at least one shooter on the floor, either Blackshear or Luke Hancock, but everyone else in their rotation can punish you in the open court.

Sustaining that much pressure over an entire game can wear an opponent out, which is where Kevin Ware’s injury hurts. Ware, at 6’2 175, gave them a third guard with the speed and quickness to ball hawk the length of the court. Not only did he have a huge edge on the second-unit players he was usually matched up with, he was also a valuable safety net when either Smith or Siva were in foul trouble. Without Ware, the margin of error for Louisville’s guards is much smaller. The backcourt is the tip of the spear in a pressure defense. If Pitino has to go deeper into his bench, the Cardinals press is no longer as imposing.

This is Pitino’s 12th season at Louisville, what separates this year’s team is their ability to execute in the halfcourt. The key has been Dieng’s emergence on the offensive end of the floor. An athletic 6’11 245 center with a 7’4 wingspan, he’s steadily improved his all-around game in his time in college. He has a consistent mid-range jumper, which opens up the floor and creates driving lanes for the Cardinals guards, and he’s also an extremely underrated passer. His ability to carve up the Syracuse zone from the high post to the tune of eight assists was one of the keys to Louisville’s victory in the Big East championship game.

Dieng is the player the other three teams in Atlanta don’t have an answer for. Wichita State is built around pounding the offensive glass, but they haven’t seen a center like Dieng in their first four games. Steven Adams (Pittsburgh) was too raw to impact the game while Kelly Olynyk (Gonzaga) is more comfortable playing on the perimeter. Both Ohio State and LaSalle preferred to play small, which played right into the Shockers hands. Syracuse has the size and athleticism to match up with Dieng, but he’s perfectly designed to exploit the conceptual hole in their 2-3 zone. Michigan has gotten a huge boost from Mitch McGary, a 6’10 250 freshman, but Dieng is one of the only players in the country whose longer, stronger and faster than him.

In breaking down the matchups, the Wolverines seem best equipped to give Louisville trouble. The key to beating a press is having the weapons to attack it once you get the ball over the half-court line. With a future lottery pick (Trey Burke) running point and a number of athletic shooters surrounding him, Michigan can reel off points quickly in an open-court setting. They easily disposed of VCU and Shaka Smart’s “Havoc” defense in the second round in a 78-53 rout. Like the Cardinals, the Wolverines have responded to the growing number of stretch 4’s in the college game by downshifting in the front-court and playing the 6’6 210 Glenn Robinson III at power forward.

However, before they can worry about Louisville, they’ll have to get by Syracuse first. And while they’re well designed to exploit the Cardinals press, the Orange’s 2-3 zone could give Michigan problems. Everything in John Beilein’s offense revolves around Burke, but he can’t be the centerpiece of their game-plan on Saturday. You have to defeat a zone by attacking it from the high post, not through dribble-drives or pick-and-rolls at the top of the key. As a result, instead of Burke, the key decision makers for the Wolverines will be their younger front-court players like McGary and Robinson. If those two get sped up by the length and activity of the Syracuse zone, it could be a long night for Michigan.

Louisville is more vulnerable than Kentucky was last year, especially without Ware, but a lot of things will have to go wrong for them to lose. There isn’t a team in Atlanta that can match their speed and athleticism at all five positions, a testament to the program Pitino has built. A great NBA coach adjusts his system to the fit the strengths of his players. A great college coach creates a system and finds players who fit into it. 17 years after he won a national title at Kentucky with a team that had nine future NBA players, Pitino is poised to win a second with only one sure-fire pro. It would be a fitting capstone to a Hall of Fame career.