Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Saunders needs to score

One of the more impressive statlines this year is being posted by Duquense junior forward Damian Saunders. Sauders is averaging over 3 blocks, 3 steals and 12 rebounds per game. His scoring is not decent, but hardly up there with his other numbers. While he leads the Dukes in scoring, it's a balanced attack that features 5 players in double figures. Saunders leads at 14.3 PPG. His efficiency is decent, but not great. Good percentages, but doesn't get to the line enough.
Saunders is a SF at 6'7" 210. Since I like to go with history, here's a list of players I found who were in something I'll call the 10-2-2 club. That's at least 10 points, 2 steals and 2 blocks per 40 minutes. All are SFs and it's a pretty impressive group. The number listed next to the player is his points per 40 minutes:

Kevin Durant: 27.7
Shawn Marion: 22.8
Danny Granger: 25.1
Shane Battier: 12.4
Danny Manning: 28.2
Renaldo Balkman: 15.3
Lionel Simmons: 23.9
Terrence Morris: 20.8

Saunders is currently at about 16. What this suggests is that Saunders will almost certainly get drafted as all except Morris were 1st round selections. Battier's number is for his freshman season. He kicked that up close to 20 by the end of his 4-year career at Duke, but without exclusive membership in the 10-2-2 club.
There's really not much to be gleaned from this. It's a small sample and tells us the obvious. That Damian Saunders will likely be a role player in the NBA unless he starts scoring a lot more frequently, in which case he'll be a starter and possibly a star. That's not a bad place to be for a prospect who was barely on the map until last year.

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