In the best selling book, The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki asserts that that a diverse group of independently-thinking individuals is likely to make certain types of predictions better than individuals with superior knowledge or expertise working in isolation. He offers many examples to support his thesis, including a story about a contest at a county fair where a crowd accurately guessed the weight of an ox within ounces when their individual guesses were averaged, soundly beating out estimates made by several cattle experts guessing independently. We thought we would experiment with VUHoops readers to see how closely we collectively can guess the average minutes per game that each player on Nova’s roster will play this season.
Until recently, Villanova has been known as Guard-U, so we thought we would begin with the point guard position. And when talking point guards, first up is, of course, Scottie Reynolds. Use the voting buttons in the right margin of the VUHoops home page to predict the number of minutes you think Scottie will play, and the comment section to tell us why. Please vote only once to maintain the integrity of the poll. To help you come up with your guess, we have provided on the next page Scottie’s minutes per game and other stats from last year as well as his player assessment. At the end of the week, we will average the reader predictions and see how close we came as the season progresses.
Scottie Reynolds 2008-2009 Stats
|
CL |
POS |
HT |
WT |
|||||||||||
|
SR |
PG |
6-2 |
195 |
38 |
32.2 |
15.2 |
2.9 |
3.4 |
2.6 |
1.6 |
0.1 |
2.3 |
40% |
82% |
VILLANOVA.com Assessment: An explosive scorer capable of playing either guard position … Crafty with the basketball, especially on drives to the basket … An accomplished 3-point shooter with range well beyond the arc … Named Most Outstanding Player at 2009 East Regional and was honorable mention All-Big East as well as First Team All-Philadelphia Big Five … Announced his intention to enter his name into National Basketball Association Draft pool on April 21, but withdrew before the draft. 2008-09 Season: One of two players to start all 38 games and led the team with 32.2 minutes per contest … Second on the team in scoring with 15.2 points per game … Paced the team with 3.4 assists per contest (128) to go along with a team-high 59 steals … Shot .400 (168-420) from the field, .353 (72-204) from three-point range and .817 (165-202) at the foul line … Had 32 games scoring in double figures, including nine games with at least 20 points, two games with at least 30 points and one with 40 points … Led the team in scoring 15 times, in steals 14 times and in assists on 19 occasions.
Bleacher Report: Scottie Reynolds has average height for a point guard (6′2″), but his 195 pounds are heavier than most point guards, so he can still drive to the basket. But he can also use his additional strength to finish the play while still getting hacked. Reynolds is also a solid shooter from all over the court. In addition, he distributes the ball well. Lastly, Reynolds is Villanova’s best on-ball perimeter defender. He averages 1.6 steals. The downside to Reynolds is that he turns the ball over 2.6 times per game.
Final Poll Results
[poll id="9"]