Where are these guys going?

One of the great things about college basketball is the potential to watch a player's development throughout his career. The age 18-22 range holds within it the possibility for huge leaps and bounds of growth that aren't rivaled in any age group except for the very young. In the basketball context, that leaves fans and coaches and scouts looking at the information they currently have on a player and trying to extrapolate from that what the player might end up being. this week we're going to do just that with the returning guys on Xavier's roster.

We're going to be using the similarity scores generated by Ken Pomeroy, honorary patron saint of bannersontheparkway.com. Pomeroy weights 13 statistical categories - more information can be had here if you're curious - to develop a score between 0-1000 regarding how similar any two players are. Class is taken into consideration, so freshmen will be compared with historical freshman years, sophomores with sophomores, et c. A match of over 850 is a useful comparison, and anything over 900 is a great match.

Obviously, to use this tool we need players who will (a) be on the team this year and (b) have a track record at the college level. Dee Davis, Matt Stainbrook, and Brandon Randolph don't fit the first category and Sean O'Mara, Larry Austin, Jr., Edmond Sumner, Makinde London, and Kaiser Gates all fall at the second hurdle. That leaves us with Trevon Bluiett, Myles Davis, Jalen Reynolds, J.P. Macura, James Farr, and Remy Abell to inspect. This is going to be akin to something we did with Brandon Randolph last year, which was so popular that we ended up having to ban a dude from the site soon after.

Hopefully this one pans out a bit better. The first of the series will go up tomorrow morning; just keep pounding F5 until you see it.