Will Purdue’s Caleb Swanigan or Wisconsin’s Ethan Happ win Big Ten Player of the Year honors?
College basketball’s at the point of the regular season where the postseason begins to take over. With just a handful of regularly scheduled conference games to get through – plus, of course, the conference tournaments – the NCAA tournament begins to dominate the conversation about the sport.
Hand-in-hand with this goes the discussion on awards for players. As most are handed out based strictly on regular season performance, the body of work for players in the conversation has mainly been completed. While some last second performances will matter, bigger conversations like national and conference Player of the Year races should focus on the player’s entire resume.
Which brings us to the Big Ten Player of the Year race. With all due respect to Melo Trimble and his clutch Terrapins, there are two elite teams in the Big Ten – Purdue and Wisconsin. The two currently sit tied at the top of the conference standings, and within KenPom’s top 15 teams by adjusted efficiency.
The players most responsible for the success of these teams are the focus of this article: Purdue’s Caleb Swanigan, and Wisconsin’s Ethan Happ. Both players are in the general conversation for National Player of the Year, though often placed (in those same discussions) behind favorites like Kansas’s Frank Mason and Villanova’s Josh Hart. But both have been incredible for their teams this year.
Caleb Swanigan’s broken out after a solid freshman year to become one of the most dominant players in college basketball. The 6-foot-9, 250-pound big man helps Purdue dominate the paint (pairing with 7-foot teammate Isaac Haas) on both ends, while also being versatile enough to help drive Purdue’s dangerous 3-point attack.
Happ’s been more of a surprise than the 5-star, McDonald’s All-American Swanigan – but just as dominant. The redshirt sophomore, who sat and learned (and grew 3-4 inches) behind Frank Kaminsky and co. during Wisconsin’s 2015 push to the national championship game, has emerged as the best player on a 23-5 Wisconsin team. He pairs with Nigel Hayes to fuel a post-centric Wisconsin offense, and his defensive prowess is one of the main drivers behind Wisconsin’s top-10 ranked defense.
We’ll go through their traditional stats – and some deeper ones – to get to the bottom of who I think should be leading the conversation for Big Ten Player of the Year.
Let’s break it down.
Box Score Stats
First, a breakdown of how they match up in more traditional measures.
Caleb Swanigan
Biggie Swanigan has thrown up a ridiculous stat line so far this year. He’s currently averaging a double-double, with 18.9 points per game and 13.0 rebounds, while adding 2.8 assists, 0.7 blocks, and 0.4 steals. En route to that double-double average, he’s posted four games that exceeded the 20-point, 20-rebound threshold – a feat which should be termed, at least for a few years, a “Swanigan.”
His 352 total rebounds on the year (and 277 defensive rebounds) pace the Big 10, and he’s just a few ticks below Iowa’s Peter Jok for the conference lead in points per game. On his own team, Biggie dominates as a box-score stuffer: he leads his teammates in points and rebounds, comes in at 2nd in blocks, and just misses being top-5 in both assists and steals.
Shot Charting
His scoring profile is one of the more versatile in the nation, especially for a big man. Check out his shot chart (which is missing the games with Auburn, Morehead State, NJIT, Minnesota, Norfolk State, Western Illinois, and Penn State). As always, see the bottom here for the shot chart methodologies.
And below is a quick chart that breaks his field goal attempts down into at the rim, 2-point jumper range, and 3-point range. The table will include all of his games.
Swanigan does his best work near the basket, taking 45 percent of his (shot chart) logged shots within 5 feet of the rim, and hitting a healthy 65.71 percent of them. He manages this volume and efficiency with a versatile arsenal, using his strength to post up effectively. Per Synergy, Swanigan posts up on 41.5 percent of his used possessions – a total of 213 – and has scored 197 points on these possessions, in the 76th percentile of all players. He also flashes a solid face-up game against slower competition – in the video below, when matched up against Michigan State’s Matt van Dyk, a jab step opens him up for an open 3-pointer.
As you can see above, he’s shown the range to step out quite effectively to the 3-point line. Swanigan’s hit 24 of his 47 attempted 3s in the chart (51 percent) on an attempt rate of just under 20 percent. His stroke looks very comfortable, though it’s not something he does a lot. It helps unlock another dimension on offense for a Purdue team currently ranked 5th in the country in 3-point field goal percentage.
One thing not shown here is Swanigan’s incredible ability to get to the free throw line. His free throw rate of 51.9 ranks within the country’s top-175 for qualifying players, per KenPom, and he draws 6.4 fouls per 40 minutes (top 60). He’s actually scored just over a quarter of his points so far this year at the stripe.
Swanigan has been one of the best scorers and rebounders in the country to this point and does quite a bit more than just that for his team.
Ethan Happ
Happ, while not the scorer and rebounder Swanigan has been, beats him soundly in versatility. To this point in the season, Happ is putting up per-game averages of 14.5 points, 9.1 rebounds, 2.9 assists, 2.0 steals, and 1.1 blocks. Every single one of those ranks as the best on his team, and he maintains his top spot (besides in blocks, where Khalil Iverson outstrips him) on a per-100 possession basis. The 6-foot-10 center current leads his conference in steals (steals!), as well as effective field goal percentage and 2-point attempts.
He contributes all over the floor, showing incredible statistical versatility for a big man. While sports-references “Player Season Finder” doesn’t allow control for height, Happ would be one of just 16 players since 1992-93 who qualified as some version of a center to even approach his points, steals, and blocks per game. Bigs simply don’t do what he can all that often.
Shot Charting
As a scorer, he’s relatively one-dimensional. Check out his shot chart (missing games against Central Arkansas, Prairie View, Oklahoma, Idaho State, Minnesota, and Penn State).
And as above, a table compiled that includes all of his games – though less detail on exactly where the shots are coming from.
So far this year, he’s taken just 27 of his logged shots farther than five feet from the basket and been pretty inefficient on the same, hitting just seven of those attempts. But that’s obviously not where he makes contributions on offense. His combination of extreme volume and solid efficiency around the basket is the basis of his value on the offensive end. Per hoop-math’s numbers, Happ is currently top 10 in D-I basketball in attempts at the rim, and the only non-small school player besides Jock Landale in the top 20.
His post-up game is the foundation of his work around the rim. Per Synergy, Happ posts up on 39.2 percent of his possessions – 138 total – and has scored 119 points on the same, good for the 65th percentile. And the threat of his post-game is compounded by his work as a passer. As noted, his 2.9 assists per game lead the team. His vision and passing out of double teams in the post is a big part of what makes Wisconsin’s offense tick, something we’ll delve deeper into later in the article.
While Happ is, statistically, nearly as good as Swanigan in drawing fouls, simply listing his free throw rate would ignore perhaps the most glaring reason he draws whistles – he can’t hit free throws. He’s hit just 64 of his 124 free throw attempts on the season per KenPom’s numbers, good for 51.6 percent. It can be a real problem when Wisconsin’s closing out games – Greg Gard will sometimes have to pull Happ to avoid hacking that puts him at the line in crunch time. It’s easily the worst part of his game at this point.
Diving Deeper (Plus-Minus & BPM)
Of course, we can’t just look at traditional stats to determine a winner in a race this close. Let’s look a little closer at the impact both Happ and Swanigan make when they’re on the floor, and what happens to their teams, respectively, when they’re off.
On-Off numbers
First, a quick comparison of their raw on-off numbers presented courtesy of the excellent hooplens.com.
Biggie’s impact for his team is felt most on the offensive end, where the team plays about 8 points/100 possessions better when he’s on the floor vs. when he’s off. The defense also improves when he’s out there, though to a lesser degree (about 5 points/100 possessions). He has played over 78 percent of his team’s possessions so far this year, and the team’s been 13 points per 100 possessions better with him out there. We’ll get deeper into the reasons why below, for both Biggie and Happ.
Speaking of Happ – his on-off “production” actually far outstrips Biggie’s at this point in the season. Check out his hooplens table below.
His relative impact on team defense alone pushes him past Biggie’s overall plus-minus effect on Purdue. When Happ has been on the court for Wisconsin, opponents score just 87 points per 100 possessions – a rate that jumps to 103 points per 100 possessions when he’s out. In unadjusted terms, he’s been the difference between the 2nd best defense in the country, and one that doesn’t even land in the country’s top half (about 175th).
And he also pushes his team to better heights on offense, “improving” his team’s offense by about 7 points per 100 possessions when he’s been on the floor. Though he’s played only 67 percent of his team’s possessions, 11 percent less than Biggie, he’s made a bigger impact for his team when out there.
While there are problems with analysis this reductive – these efficiencies don’t account for opponent or game situation, and speak to their relative impact on their own teams and not overall team quality so it’s pretty clearHapp has been more important to his team in terms of efficiency margin so far this year.
Box Plus-Minus
This is reflected in their Box Plus-Minus numbers. This metric, developed by Daniel Myers, uses a statistical regression from box-score based stats to “evaluate a basketball player’s quality and contribution to the team.” It grades out on a per-100-possession basis; +5 means a player is 5 points better than an average player over 100 possessions, and vice versa.
Ethan Happ currently leads the country, with a BPM of +17.4 points/100 possessions. He’s current +1.2 better than second place Sindarious Thornwell and +6.3/100 better than Swanigan’s solid mark of +11.1 per 100 possessions.
Much of this is clearly tied to Happ’s versatility in the defensive box score. While their offensive contributions are rated more closely by BPM, with Happ at +7.3 and Swanigan at +5.2, Happ hits double digits in Defensive BPM alone (+10.0), while Biggie ‘lags’ far behind at +5.9.
As noted in this excellent explanation from basketball-reference, box score information on defensive contribution is limited to blocks, steals, and rebounds. While Biggie clearly beats Happ in rebounds, Happ has a significant edge in steal rate and soundly beats out Biggie in block percentage. Due to this, he will simply be assigned much more credit for Wisconsin’s defensive performance than Swanigan will be for Purdue’s – an assignment that holds up based on their on-off numbers, and relative impact on team defense. While there is some danger, as can be seen in this Twitter thread, shot-blocking bigs are overrated in college BPM, it seems pretty clear Happ has a bigger relative impact on his team than Caleb Swanigan does so far this year.
Thinking outside the box score – Offense
Rather than simply rely on the hooplens data – excellent though it is – I delved a bit deeper into the contributions each player makes on offense that doesn’t quite show up in the box score. First, a quick look at the offensive shot charts for each team, when each player is on (and off) the court.
Caleb Swanigan’s Offensive Impact
In a backward intuitive way, Swanigan’s biggest impact for Purdue this year on offense has been from beyond the 3-point line. While Biggie has been quite effective on his own from beyond the 3-point line, his ~50 shots don’t account for what we see above.
When he’s been on the court, Purdue has hit an astonishing 43.7 percent of its 359 3-point attempts. When Biggie’s off, his team has hit just 32.9 percent of its 82 long-range attempts. These numbers are similar to the overall rates – which include games the shot charts are missing – seen in the below table.
The attention Biggie draws to the interior has to be the biggest reason for this effect. As Purdue’s best player and go-to option, his ability to draw the eyes and double teams of his opponent leave Purdue’s array of shooters wide open on the perimeter to do their thing. It’s extremely unlikely Purdue would be one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the country without the powers of interior presences like Biggie and Isaac Haas
Ethan Happ’s Offensive Impact
Happ’s effect on the offense is similar, but not as extreme as Swanigan’s – Wisconsin has simply not been as good as Purdue from deep this year. Still, the shot charts show interesting effects from behind the 3-point line, and near the rim.
While Happ’s been on the court, Wisconsin’s shooters have hit 93 of their 259 logged 3-point shots, good for nearly 36 percent. While he’s off, the team is hitting just 30 percent from three (46 for 153). As with Biggie, Happ’s ability to draw defenders inside, and make passes off double teams in the post, really opens up the perimeter for everyone else. The chart below, including all shots missed by the shot chart data, shows the on-off numbers for shooting from the zones, and how often the makes for each are assisted.
Per hoop-math, 57.3 percent ofHapp’s 75 assists have come on 3-pointers, the highest percentage on the team for rotation players. His passing and interior presence are integral to the success of Wisconsin’s 3-point attack. Check out how, when he draws the double, he takes a false step to the baseline to draw the 2nd man just a bit farther away from D’Mitrik Trice.
When on the floor, Happ has scored or assisted on 44 percent of Wisconsin’s total points – an incredible mark.
An interesting note from the shot charting – Wisconsin is just as good as the basket when he’s off vs. when he’s on, despite Happ hitting 64 percent of his attempts within 5 feet. I’d reason the biggest reason for this is Happ’s lack of any sort of range. When he’s on the floor, he’s near the basket.
While he’s been excellent in his own efficiency on close shots, his presence (and the presence of his defender) near the rim makes it more difficult for everyone else to get to the basket. While Happ’s hit 64 percent of his close shots, everyone else on the team is hitting just 56 percent near the basket while he’s on the floor. The spacing is better when he’s off the floor, which opens up the middle for more drives – though, clearly, it’s not helping from 3.
Thinking outside the box score – Defense
Here’s a similar look at the impacts of each player on the opposite end.
Ethan Happ – Defensive Impact
Similar to his offensive on-off numbers, Happ’s presence on defense is most clearly away from the basket. The Badgers have been significantly more vulnerable from the mid-range when he’s off the floor, in the clearest visual note. When Happ’s in the game, teams have been forced to take over 40 percent of their shots from the various mid-range areas (non-RA paint, short mid-range, and long mid-range), and have hit just 31 percent on those shots. When he’s out, the volume of these shots drops to 38 percent of all attempts, while the efficiency jumps in a big way – teams are hitting 42 percent of their mid-rangers when he’s out.
The team also suffers beyond the arc when missing his defensive presence. Per the logged shots, teams have hit over 38 percent of their 3s when he’s off the floor, vs. just under 33 percent when he’s on. The volume from deep also increases; just 31.2 percent of opponent shots come from deep while he’s in the game, against 35.5 percent when he’s out.
This effect is something that keeps popping up in various situations I’ve analyzed and clearly makes logical sense in basketball outside my small scopes – the presence of a rim protector lets perimeter defenders extend, to lower the number and quality of looks from behind the arc.
Caleb Swanigan – Defensive Impact
Biggie’s defensive impact, though, is best measured near the rim.
In the logged teams, teams have hit just 58.5 percent of their looks from within 5 feet when Swanigan’s on the floor, vs. 67.6 percent when he’s out. The 3-point percentage jumps a bit when he’s on the floor (from 26.5 percent when he’s out, to 32.7 percent when he’s in), but Purdue’s 3-point defense has been excellent in either case. The table below reflects all shots, including what the shot charting missed.
Much of the ‘struggle’ from 3-point land is related to the minutes Swanigan shares with Purdue’s other behemoth – Isaac Haas. Both Haas and Swanigan are likely best suited, on defense, to play the 5. When Haas is on the floor, Swanigan is pushed into more of a perimeter role on defense. And while his conditioning has improved significantly since, say, high school, it’s a difficult ask for a 6-foot-9, 250-pounder to both carry the offensive load for the team and chase shooters around the perimeter on defense.
But Biggie’s been good on defense as the lone big. Check out the defensive shot charts and stats when Swanigan is the center on the floor – a role, per KenPom’s lineup algorithms and hooplens data, he takes about half the time.
The defense drops off a bit – per hooplens, opponents score 97 points per 100 possessions against any lineup including Swanigan and without Haas, versus 90 points per 100 for any other. But the offense picks up enough to make the lineup a net positive, and the team is hitting 45.4 percent of its 3s when using this configuration. Swanigan is more than capable of manning the 5 on defense – watch him stick with Indiana’s Thomas Bryant below (as the defensive 5), and block him at the rim.
This is an interesting configuration for Purdue – though they do well with both bigs on the floor, putting Biggie at the 5 unlocks a dangerous offensive configuration without sacrificing its rim protection at the other end.
Who’s Better in Clutch Time?
I’ll be honest – I planned on this section because I thought it would reflect well on Biggie Swanigan. As it turns out, both players have performed close to the same in clutch time, and Wisconsin as a team has actually been better.
Wisconsin’s overall record, for games that include any “clutch time” (as defined in this article on college basketball’s best clutch teams, any game within 6 points in the last 5 minutes of the game, or overtime) is currently 5-1, an excellent winning percentage. The team’s net rating during ‘clutch time’ is +56 points per 100 possessions, an excellent mark that would rank among college basketball’s best.
Happ has done fine in these situations; check out the table below for his stats in ‘clutch time.’
While he’s struggled with his stroke from the free throw line, he’s handled 19 possessions during crunch time. He’s shooting 8-for-13 during the closing minutes of close games; only his poor free throw shooting drags down his overall efficiency (he’s just 4-for-10 from the line in these situations). He’s also dished four assists to two turnovers.
Despite Happ’s free throw troubles, this is about equal to what Biggie Swanigan’s pulled off during clutch time. Check out the table below for Biggie’s clutch time stats:
Biggie’s scored 21 points on 23 possessions during crunch time of close games and has hit just 5 of the 15 shots he’s taken during these critical moments. His ability to get to the free throw line is most of what’s sustaining his efficiency here. He’s taken 14 free throws, compared to 15 shot attempts, and hit 10 of them.
Purdue as a whole has been relatively poor in crunch time, though. Their net rating is about neutral (+6 points per 100 possessions), and they’ve got just a 4-5 record in all games that include even a bit of crunch time. It’s difficult to say Wisconsin’s better record is better because of Happ, or Purdue’s is bad because of Swanigan. It’s easy to say neither has far outstripped the other during the most critical parts of close games.
The Final Verdict
In the end, it’s a tough choice between a pair of excellent players. I’m going to cop out a bit, and keep a foot on either side of the fence: I think Swanigan is the Big Ten’s best player, but Happ is the most valuable to his team.
Biggie’s surroundings, or the quality of player/team construction surrounding him, are better. The team doesn’t drop off as much without him, though they depend on his talents for around 80 percent of every game. His scoring ability and physical dominance set him apart from nearly all other college players – he’s better than just about everyone else in the game. But Purdue would be a good squad without him, which limits the impact we can see with certain stats.
Happ’s impact, especially on the defensive side of the floor, is quite literally the difference between Wisconsin being an elite squad and just middling this year. His combination of rim protection, steals and rebounding can make a good defense on its own. Combining this with the offense running through him on the other side – necessary for this particular Wisconsin team – lets him shine in advanced metrics and on-off numbers.
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Where you land in the end depends on what your criteria for the award are. Biggie would likely be the first choice in any Big 10 pickup game; Happ might be the pick if you want to build a program foundation for the whole season.