Jerel in NBADL Finals

[MUfan12]

Wade was clearly more efficient than McNeal....the numbers say as much in pretty much every category.  Why would I think he was overrated?

Hah. No reason to. I edited that last post. Didn't look deep enough into the other numbers.

[Aughnanure]

Jerel was an all-decade player at MU.  If you can't appreciate the positives he brought, you're a spoiled fan.

In no particular order:
Wade
Diener
Novak
James
McNeal
Matthews
Hayward
Butler
RJax
and then.... (who do you put in the 10th slot?  Maybe DJO for the year he had last year?)

I would like to see you rank MU's players in the past decade like jamailman did.

Here's mine:
Wade
McNeal
Novak
Matthews
Hayward
James
Diener
Butler
DJO
RJAX

Wow, people giving Novak a lot of credit for always being a #2-3 option at best and playing okay defense.

[Canned Goods n Ammo]

No I would not call Wes a "great college player."

Look, I don't want people to think I hated Jerel.  I am glad that he is doing well and hopes he makes the NBA because he definately is a hard-worker.  I just think he was a little overated as a senior.  People were asking why people rag on MU's all time leading scorer...and I thought I would address it.

Fair enough. Like I said, I think this is probably more of a semantics debate around the word "great" vs "good".

[bamamarquettefan]

I was happy to poke fun at myself for forgetting how bad a defensive play was vs. Nova, but you critics have to come back to realty staring with looking at these five names:

Dean Meminger
Jim Chones
Dwyane Wade
Butch Lee
Jerel McNeal

Almost 4000 players played Division 1 basketball in 2009, and at the end of the year Jerel McNeal was judged to be in the top 0.25% of them, one of the best 10, by sports writers across the country.  The other four players listed are the only other players to ever be judged that good at the end of a college season.

Certainly I understand a Marquette fan arguing that Bo Ellis, Maurice Lucas, George Thompson and Earl Tatum SHOULD HAVE BEEN picked as one of the top 10 players in the country when they played, but to go the other way and argue not only that Jerel wasn't one of the best 10, but that he wasn't even great, is beyond me.  Let's just say you believe you are much, much smarter than all the sports writers in the country at comparing Jerel to all the other players in the country, and you determine that he really was only the 40th best player in the country.  Despite your harsh evaluation of Jerel, that would still make him one of the best 1% of all Division 1 players in America, which is great.

Almost 700 players have played for MU, and you simply cannot make a logical case that Jerel was not in the top 2% of all players in MU history - so if he wasn't great then we simply haven't had great players at Marquette.

I went to the NCAA tournament when Jerel was in street clothes against Michigan State and watched Marquette go over 9 minutes without scoring a basket.  I went back the next two years and watched him score 30 against both Stanford and Missouri.

As for only being our all-time leading scorer because he shot a lot - obviously the great players shoot a lot and get to the line a lot.  

Dwyane Wade put up a lot more shots and had a lot more turnovers his final year than Jerel, so you may as well argue that Wade only appeared to dominant because he shot so much.  Obviously if you are one of the few teams in the country to have an All-American on your team you want him handling the ball and going to the hoop.  Do you think Kevin O'Neill made a mistake in telling Tony Smith to start trying to score every time down the court after 3 years of sharing the ball while Marquette was drubbed game after game?

[bamamarquettefan]

OK fine.... their senior years....

Wes had a higher offensive efficiency rating than Jerel....
Better???

Sultan - you can't use offensive efficiency to determine better player outside of using percentage of possessions used and minutes played.  Here is Marquette's top player in offensive efficiency every year:

2011- Joe Fulce (several were better offensive players)
2010- Jimmy Butler (Hayward better)
2009- Jimmy Butler (hardly even played until DJs injury)
2008-Dan Fitzgerald (several better)
2007-Dan Fitzgerald (several better)
2006- Steve Novak (No. 1 in the country despite limited usage)
2005- Steve Novak (No. 3 in the country despite limited usage)

So you see, using that you end up saying Jimmy Butler got much worse once he had to take over, Steve Novak the same thing.

Ken Pomeroy always breaks down the leaders based on players who are used in 28% of possessions, then 24%, etc. because as a player becomes a go-to guy he has to try to score more and gets more defensive attention.

I emailed back and forth with Pomeroy last year on a formula I put together that combines % of possessions, % of minutes and offensive efficiency to calculate the actual impact each player has on the team and he really liked the formula, so I'm hoping that gets incorporated.  It's a pretty complicated formula that he'd have to get into his system to work, but I'm pretty confident Jerel had a more positive statistical impact than Wesley their senior years.

[tower912]

Thanks, John.   I have started about 5 different posts on this and deleted them all because I couldn't get them to flow right.    And 1(in honor of the frequent cry of our players this year and as an alternative to +1) to everything you wrote.  

[GGGG]

bama...those are all fair points.  But I am not using only offensive efficiency.  There were a number of places where I thought Matthews was better.  And also Mc Neal could obviously do things that you cannot measure better than Matthews.  Break down a defense for instance. 

[lurch91]

And also Mc Neal could obviously do things that you cannot measure better than Matthews.  Break down a defense for instance. 

Without McNeal, Buzz would be 0-3 vs. Bucky.  Of course, there are other games that McNeal was able to breakdown a defense, but that UW game was amazing as there was nothing Bo/UW could do to stop Jerel from scoring.

[nycwarrior]

Jerel turned it over too much and took some frustrating shots. Got it.

But the fact is that neither Crean nor Buzz could take him off the floor from the moment he arrived on campus to the moment he put in 30+ in a losing NCAA effort.

He like his fellow amigos will always lose points in "All time greats" conversations because they never got to the sweet 16, let alone beyond it.

I don't have a problem with people calling out the flaws in their games and naming the things not accomplished. Those are just the facts.

The problem comes in the way people go WAY overboard in saying they weren't great players. As a trio they put MU on the map in the Big East. No other class faced that challenge and no other class deserves that credit. They carried us from CUSA to the big leagues. And they did it with guts and class.

If Jerel's "all-time" numbers are inflated it's because his coaches, in the midst of nightly dogfights, couldn't bare to take him off the court. Ever.

If his first team All Big East and Second Team All American status was the result of being overrated, I'd like to see a lot more MU players get that kind of attention.

[Aughnanure]

^ +1, well said.

[reinko]

In the 4th quarter of the finals, Jerel has 23 pts, 11 boards, 6 assists

[NYWarrior]

Another huge night for Jerel ... RGV lost in the finals

http://www.nba.com/dleague/games/20110429/RGVIWA/gameinfo.html?ls=gt2hp2041000303

[77ncaachamps]

It's all Scheyer's (4-13 FG, 2-10 3pt) fault!