Who is better?

As you probably know, Craig Smith was named first-team all ACC. Jared Dudley was named second-team and Rice made all-freshman.

Dave mentioned something that many of you know I feel -- Jared Dudley is better than Craig Smith and voters get sucked in by the reputation and higher per game average. I also think Dudley had a better year last year. This year he was a little more inconsistent and at times seemed to defer to Smith. Now I love both. They are both great players and I am glad to see them honored, but Dudley is more valuable. In an effort to quantify my gut I decided to crunch the numbers using a version of Dean Oliver’s offensive rating. (Oliver is the Bill James of basketball. Read his book if you like hoops and stats.)

Oliver's offensive formula takes the numbers of points produced (including production from assists and offensive rebounds), divides that number by the total individual possessions (another number that sums points with things like turnover and attempts) and multiplies that by 100 (the common multiple for basketball ratings).

Here are their 2005-2006 offensive ratings

Smith	110.5
Dudley	113.4

However, showing that my gut is not always right, Dudley did not have a better year last season. In fact both players greatly improved their ratings this year (partially through their assists and partially through getting to the foul line a lot more).

2005-2006 offensive ratings

Smith	82.8
Dudley	88.1

At the end of the day these are just numbers trying to quantify something that still has a lot of subjectivity. Regardless of who is first team and who is not, I hope both want to finish strong and win something (the conference tournament or the whole damn thing)!