Most Underrated Player: D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera (Georgetown)
November 7, 2014
by Mark Titus
by Mark Titus
Smith-Rivera was named the Big East Preseason Player of the Year, so he isn’t exactly an unknown in the world of college basketball. But if you ask a college hoops fan who doesn’t follow the Big East closely to name someone from last year’s Georgetown team, and then you remind them that Otto Porter wasn’t on that team, my guess is that their answer would be either Markel Starks or Joshua Smith. Starks, after all, was the senior point guard who was first-team all-conference last season, and Smith was … well, we’ll get to Smith in a bit. In the meantime, check out this blind player comparison from last season:
PPG RPG St/gm TO/gm FG% FT% 3PT%
Player A 17.6 5.0 1.2 1.7 44.5 87.3 39.3
Player B 17.3 2.3 0.9 2.3 41.2 87.0 32.6
One of those players is Starks and the other is Smith-Rivera. I left out assists per game, because with Starks playing point guard, his assist numbers would have been a dead giveaway. Even so, knowing that Starks was first-team all-conference and that Smith-Rivera made the second team should lead you to the conclusion that Starks is Player A and Smith-Rivera is Player B, right? The point wasn’t to make you guess which player was which, but rather to show that Smith-Rivera was just a tiny bit worse than Starks last seas—
Wait, what? Starks is Player B and Smith-Rivera is Player A?
Huh. That’s weird. Starks averaged 4.1 assists per game, while Smith-Rivera averaged 2.7, but every other meaningful statistic says that Smith-Rivera had the better year? And he ended up on the Big East second team? Well, OK then.
I don’t mean to disparage Starks. He was Georgetown’s leader and the kind of four-year athlete that NCAA traditionalists love to rave about. But Smith-Rivera matched him statistically, and he did it as a sophomore playing second fiddle. Now that Smith-Rivera is the Hoyas’ no. 1 guy, Lord have mercy on the rest of the Big East.
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