If Duke gets Giles back and are full strength, they are probably better than 38-1 Kentucky from 2 seasons ago.

So Grayson Allen was an All American last year and is now probably Duke's 3rd best guard. And the guards on this team might not be as good as the bigs, at least when Bolden and Giles get back to full strength.

Kennard > Allen is pretty real at this point. Jayson Tatum is almost certainly going to be better than him (is debatably a guard - he's played that way so far). I really wouldn't be that surprised if Frank Jackson is better by the end of the season, it's close right now.

Kennard has been pretty unreal this year. 41/52/88 shooting splits on a pretty high volume of shots. He's slithery, incredibly hard to keep out of the lane. Has a large arsenal of head fakes, changes of direction, etc. Average athlete in terms of explosiveness but outstanding in terms of body control and awareness. And it doesn't look like it's just because of playing cupcakes - his numbers are actually better in the four game sample of good teams Duke has played (Sparty/Florida/Kansas/URI).

I still think Amile is their most valuable player and probably won't change my opinion until someone overtakes him in the metrics. He's not flashy or a lottery pick but I think he's impacting game scores in ways that are boring and not obvious. That's mostly my EYE TEST take on it. His BPM history seems to support that, although BPM takes forever to converge. However,

Year	Minutes	BPM	BPM Rank
2013	405	6.2	6
2014	796	10.0	1
2015	831	9.5	5
2016	273	10.3	1
2017	310	13.5	1

we can probably spitball guesstimate what his BPM would be in a good prediction model that incorporates career arc, past performance, etc. Really feels like ~10.0+, although maybe I'm wrong and a model would regress him back to the pack more. I just can't imagine it's < 10 though given the data, his experience, and that his value seems to come from things that are easily repeatable and difficult to stop (positioning, effort, floor awareness).

The biggest rivalry in the history of the universe is tonight, that's right, Nebraska vs Creighton

I think Kennard is slightly better in kenpoms poy rankings. But Amile is clearly less replaceable than Kennard.

Iowa definetely a big ten sleeper if they can keep playing defense like they did tonight. Team is young but we have some serious offensive firepower

is there an easy way to pull kenpom team data into excel in a batch

Nebrasketbalolololololol

It would be fairly trivial to do it in JavaScript/JQuery. For example, to grab the team ratings off the front page, just do something like this, save it to a file instead of the console and you've got a CSV file to load into Excel

apparently UNLV has basically an entirely new team this year. 12 new players and 3 returning or something like that. Pretty extreme there.

This Duke team is just amazing

Grayson Allen is laying waste to UNLV's rims. Most athletic white player I've seen in a long time. Just monster dunks.

Jesus man, this team. Jayson Tatum is supposed to a top 5 or so pick in the draft, and I'm not even sure he should start once everyone is healthy. Giles/Jefferson/Allen/Kennard/Jackson feels more like the best starting 5.

I think against bigger more athletic teams they should start Tatum and have Kennard be scoring spark off the bench. UNC for example. Kennard has been an elite scorer so far but 2nd half of Florida game Tatum looked unguardable at stretches. Never thought Jefferson would be starting once everyone got healthy but he is just a beast this year on both sides. Will be interesting to see what happens with Jones. He is still their best on ball defender and can get hot from 3 but might be hard to find minutes for him.

Curious to see how K handles subs. Bench has been so shallow the last decade that he hasnt had experience with this kind of depth. Outside of USA bball at least. Good problem to have.

Kennard is just better than Tatum, full stop. Kennard should be starting and playing big minutes every single game.

The only way to start Tatum is if you want to sit Jackson and go big, or if Giles just isn't ready or as good as we think he is.

if you want to see lights out shooting, turn on the ucla/michigan game. teams are a combined 22/30 on 3pt

Surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet but KU's Carlton Bragg apparently struck and then threw his girlfriend down some stairs. Hopefully Self kicks him off the team if this turns out to be true.

Bama was down 14 in Eugene, but just took their first lead, 54-53 with 4:04 to play

why the hell is grayson allen still at Duke? Like is it a rule if you're white and have an annoying face you have to stay 4 years? #TRADITION

Grayson should come off the bench. He can handle scoring and creation when only 3 starters are in.

Grayson fits in that sweet spot of being a really good college player but not being rated highly by the NBA (at least during initial seasons), thus staying 3-4 years. See also Luke Kennard, Jon Scheyer, Kyle Singler, Nolan Smith, Quinn Cook, Amile Jefferson, Ryan Kelly, most of the Plumlords, Seth Curry, and many more.

Grayson is a future starter in the NBA. Duke just got lucky he decided to come back.

Villanova looking to add to their already impressive resume by playing Temple tonight. Temple has wins over WVU and FSU already. Probably between a 6-9 seed.

Nova just has no size whatsoever. I feel like theyre going to eventually play a team in the tournament they should beat, but lose to them because that team has an actual frontcourt with size and will dominate the paint and boards.

Nova dismantling Temple. Theyve now won @Purdue, neutral vs ND, and beat temple by 30. They still got Virginia left in the non con. Think theyre a favorite to be one of the top 2 1 seeds. Theyre the best passing team in the nation and somewhat unguardable.