Are you experienced?

NCAA Basketball Stats

So, we talked a lot about how our team was young this year.  The chart above is from statsheet.com.  What he does is take each player and multiply their minutes played by their year in school.  So, Freshmen are x1, Sophomores x2, Juniors x3, Seniors x4.  So, you get a measure of experience based on playing time, which I think is a pretty good way to go about it.  It doesn't tell everything--Calhoun would be a Sophomore (2x) even though he is only playing for the first year.

Anyhoo.  As you can see, BG was not the youngest team in the MAC--or even close.  Even if you throw out the Rockets, who were unnaturally young due to the need to completely re-boot the program, there were still 3 younger teams in the MAC and each of them ended up with better records than the Falcons had.  We were almost exactly as experienced as WMU and they beat us twice.  On the other hand, BG was 1-1 against OU and beat Ball State.

Still, Ball State and WMU were both top 4 seeds, and they were younger than BG.

Now, when we look at the more experienced teams, we see NIU, EMU, and CMU, three of the 45 worst teams in D1, RPI-wise.

So its not about experience, per se.  The key is to have good players who are experienced.  The worst player will eventually become a senior.

My observation--without any actual data--is that the MAC has more high quality FR and SO then it has in a long time.  My point is that BG is not going to compete just by getting more experienced.  That will help, but other teams that are already ahead of us will gain just as much if not more.  We have to get more experienced and have our players continue to grow.  We can't assume we will compete next year just because we only lost one guy.