ACC "experience" on the court

RamblinRed, the resident hoops guru over at The Hive put together an interesting comparison of the percentage of total minutes played by each class for each team in the ACC through today - and there's some very interesting information if you see it broken down like this. First, the graph:


Quick obversations that really stand out to me - beyond the "holy crap GT is young" one that jumps off the page at you.

1. Duke has gotten absolutely nothing out of their current junior class, and Wake out of their current sophmore class. Even with Jarrett Jack and Chris Bosh both early entry to the NBA draft, GT still at least gets SOMETHING out of that class. It's amazing that two schools with their basketball traditions would take a donut on an entire recruiting class.


2. Gary Williams has sleep walked (or partied) through recruiting season for the past couple of years. No production at all from the '04 and '05 recruiting classes.


3. Coach K sleep walked (or flirted with NBA teams) through both the '03 and '04 recruiting seasons - 3.4% of total MPG combined between those two classes. Ouch. (Shaun Livingston and Luol Deng to the NBA hurt - but that's basically it for those two years)
   


4. Almost half of the ACC (5 out of 12) get less than 10 MPG from their '04 classes (current sophmores). Last year was a terrible year for ACC recruiting overall. The league as a whole averages under 10% of total MPG from sophmores.
   


5. UNC is very young, but still gets almost 3 times the minutes from upperclass players than GT gets. It's impossible to understate how young and inexperienced this Yellow Jacket team is.


6. VT is going to have by far the most experienced team in the league next year.


7. UNC's freshman are really good, and they play a ton - far more than any team in the league. Expect that to continue next year, with an even better class incoming.


8. Florida State and NCSU have solid teams returning next year as well, despite good senior contributions - there's a lot of depth already on their teams.

Again, thanks to RamblinRed for putting this together - it might be something to look at again at the mid point of the ACC season and see how it plays out over conference play. More discussion of this can be found on this The Hive topic.