UWM Needs More Pass-teurization

Pun City went to a couple UW-Milwaukee games last week, some mixed results. Both were poorly attended, primarily by students, which are looking like fair weather fans. In fairness to them, literally (outside) and figuratively (subpar team this year), it was bad weather last Wednesday vs. South Dakota State and Sunday vs. Tennessee Tech. Above: Student Section brutally empty on Sunday
Above: X-treme zoom found the students on Wednesday.
Above: The students weren't the only ones missing on Wednesday.

This blog was also up to something on Sunday: taking stats. The hypothesis this blog was trying to prove was that certain players were ball hogs (ahem, Ryan Thornton and to a much lesser extent Avery Smith). This blog had been informally keeping track of pass-to-shot ratios for Thornton only earlier in the year. Most games he had the same (or more) shots than passes. This is virtually impossible to do in basketball. Granted, Thornton doesn't play too many minutes, and some players' roles can be defined as shooters, lending to less passes, but this guy was seemingly out of control. Unofficially, he had a couple games with 2 passes, 3 shots; 3 passes, 3 shots, 2 passes, 5 shots. Bear in mind these included inbounds passes, passes 70 feet from the basket, anything.

Pun City also found out it's tough to track passes without the benefit of replay, so aside from the pass not being an official stat in the first place, these are very unofficial statistics.

Starting with the least selfish players, here's UWM's breakdown:

Nick Hansen - 7 passes, 0 shots

Marcus Skinner - 7 passes, 0 shots

Kevin Massiah - 1 shot every 13 passes. (39 and 3)

Allan Hanson - 1 shot every 8.1 passes. (81 and 10)

Charlie Swiggett - 1 shot every 6.8 passes. (61 and 9)

Ricky Franklin - 1 shot every 3.75 passes. (15 and 4)

Paige Paulsen - 1 shot every 3 passes. (27 and 9)

Sam Mauldin - 1 shot every 1.67 passes (10 and 6)

Avery Smith - 1 shot every 1.57 passes (11 and 7)

Roman Gentry - 1 shot every 1.3 passes (13 and 10)

Ryan Thornton - 1 shot per pass (1 and 1)

Myles McKay also played but did not make any passes or attempt any shots.

Now, the shooting percentages from the game:

Sam Mauldin - 66.7%

Charlie Swiggett - 44.4%

Allan Hanson - 40.0%

Paige Paulsen - 33.3%

Roman Gentry - 30.0%

Avery Smith - 28.6%

Ricky Franklin - 25.0%

Kevin Massiah - 0.0%

Ryan Thornton - 0.0%

Thornton and Smith were the only 2 Panthers in the bottom 4 for both shooting percentage and "unselfishness." This is a small sample size, but this blog still thinks at the very least that Thornton and Smith are not very efficient for the Panthers. To coach Rob Jeter's credit, the pair seems to be getting decreased playing time. Mauldin started in place of Smith, and Thornton saw only 1 minute of action after averaging 3:40 per game the rest of the season.

Here's hoping UWM and each of its players continually become more efficient and unselfish over the course of the season.