The Many Baskets of Jermaine Sanders

yesterday I wrote a season review about Jermaine Sanders. In the post, I made a claim that Sanders did not have more than a handful of baskets that he created on his own. If no one assisted him, Sanders didn’t score was my primary point. Since I couldn’t find the assist percentage on made shots at Basketball State before my free page views wore off, I have to manually look at all of Jermaine Sanders’ baskets. This sounds like a lot more work than it really it. Sanders only scored 38 baskets. He didn’t score a basket in 12 of those games.

Why didn’t you do a post like this during the season? That’s a good question. The answer is simple. The game to game sample of Sanders made field goals were so small that they didn’t really matter. When you add them up for a whole season things get interesting. We will find out how interesting in a few minutes.

This is going to be a pure list of the made baskets by Sanders. The following will look like this.

#) Type of basket – assisted yes or no – assisted by

It’s that simple. The list is after the jump due to obvious reasons.

1) Layup – Yes – Parker

2) 3 pointer – Yes – Wright

3) Jumper – No – None

4) Jumper – Yes – Thomas

5) Layup – Yes – Davis

6) Layup – Yes – Kilpatrick

7) Jumper – No – None

8) Layup – No – None

9) 3 Pointer – Yes – Wright

10) 3 pointer – Yes – Kilpatrick

11) Tip in – No – Rebound

12) 3 pointer – Yes – Rubles

13) Layup – Yes – Wright

14) Layup – Yes – Guyn

15) Layup – No – None

16) Layup – Yes – Kilpatrick

17) Jumper – No – Rebound

18) Layup – Yes – Jackson

19) Layup – Yes – Kilpatrick

20) 3 pointer – Yes – Wright

21) 3 pointer – Yes – Wright

22) Layup – Yes – Wright

23) 3 pointer – Yes – Parker

24) Layup – No – Rebound

25) Jumper – Yes – Kilpatrick

26) Layup – Yes – Rubles

27) 3 pointer – Yes – Rubles

28) 3 pointer – Yes – Parker

29) Jumper – Yes – Rubles

30) 3 pointer – Yes – Wright

31) 3 pointer – Yes – Parker

32) 3 pointer – Yes – Rubles

33) Jumper – Yes – Jackson

34) Layup – No – None

35) Tip in – No – Rebound

36) 3 pointer – Yes – Parker

37) Layup – Yes – Parker

38) Jumper – Yes – Parker

Assist men

Parker – 7

Wright – 7

Kilpatrick – 5

Rubles -5

Jackson – 2

Thomas – 1

Davis – 1

Guyn – 1

None – 9

Basket Variety

Jumper – 8

Layup – 15

3 Pointer – 13

Tip In – 2

Only 3 baskets weren’t assisted on in conference play. Numbers 1 and 2 are the Providence game. That would mean 18 of 21 field goals were assisted on. The conference stats start at number 19 if you want to count along. Tip-ins were counted by what it said on the official play by play. A few more were baskets off of offensive rebounds. Just because he made so few shots, 16, his freshman season.

1) Jumper – Yes – Guyn

2) Layup – Yes – Gates

3) Layup – Yes – Jackson

4) Layup – Yes – Davis

5) 3 pointer – Yes – Wright

6) 3 pointer – Yes – Dixon

7) 3 pointer – Yes – Kilpatrick

8) Tip in – No – Rebound

9) 3 pointer – Yes – Wright

10) 3 pointer – Yes – Davis

11) Jumper – Yes – Dixon

12) 3 pointer – Yes – Guyn

13) Layup – Yes – Mbodj

14) 3 pointer – Yes – Kilpatrick

15) Layup – Yes – Parker

16) Layup – Yes – Parker

Assist

Guyn – 2

Davis – 2

Wright – 2

Dixon – 2

Kilpatrick – 2

Parker – 2

Mbodj – 1

Gates – 1

Jackson – 1

None – 1

Basket Variety

Jumper – 2

Layup – 6

3 Pointer – 7

Tip in – 1

Interestingly enough that is 15 of 16 baskets that came off an assist. Due to simple math, 10 of the 54 baskets did not come off assists. That’s 18.5%. I don’t know if that’s high or low, but it seems very low. To have almost all of your baskets for one season to be off of assists is not a very good sign that  you can make plays for yourself.

Of the 54 career field goals by Jermaine Sanders 21 are layups, 20 are 3 pointers, 10 are jumpers and 3 are tip-ins. My point about Sanders not being the type to get his own shot wasn’t as extreme as I put it earlier, but it is still very extreme. You would expect someone like David Nyarsuk, who can only put down alley oops pretty much, to have the very high assisted shot percentage and someone who plays on the wing to have a lower percentage. That’s because guys on the wing catch the ball and dribble. They take their man to the tin, which doesn’t get assists. I bet if someone ran the numbers on just the amount of 3 pointers Cashmere Wright made that his assist total on those would be lower than Sanders’ for the season. You would have to go by the assist percentage because Cashmere Wright made 73 three pointers and Sanders has only made 54 shots for his career. But that’s a story for another day.

This was a post based on a theory that Jermaine Sanders is terrible at getting his own shot. That theory was validated. When I wrote earlier that Sanders could grow as a junior but I wasn’t sure, I don’t think becoming a completely different player over a summer is something that happens. Jermaine Sanders can be a good spot up shooter. He really hasn’t been, but he has had games where he has drilled multiple 3s. Running pick and rolls with him as the pick man where he can go to the basket or pop out for a 3 could work. If you make Sanders move, he’s going to pass. I don’t know if he’s the type that can be the aggressive wing. Hell, I don’t know if that would be successful for any type of wing player. Even a Field Williams or Tony Bobbitt would dribble and then shoot. It’s weird because being a Shane Battier or a Mike Miller isn’t a bad thing, but being a role player on a team where your role is stand over there and maybe shoot the ball or tip it in doesn’t sound like everyone’s dream. You have to buy into that. I hope that Jermaine Sanders buys into that because that seems like the future he is going to hold. One as a role player who shoots 3s, rebounds and makes some nice passes from time to time. If he could do the job well, that would be an success for Cincinnati. Having bench threats is never a bad thing. I don’t know though, with all the hype and the talent, you wish Sanders could be more. Would he be this same player at Pitt or Seton Hall or Virginia Tech or Maryland? We will never know. What we do know is that Jermaine Sanders confounds me and he is not good at making shots when people don’t help him. The end.