The Razorback basketball game saw its first crushing blow of the season, with news that 6’10 forward Trevon Brazile tore his ACL and is out for the season. Brazile brought incredible athleticism and was blossoming as a perimeter offensive player.
Replacing a unique player like Brazile will not be easy. He was responsible for 15% of Arkansas’ possessions, third on the team behind Ricky Council IV and Anthony Black.
We have a stat that can help us understand the loss of Brazile. Our adjusted box plus-minus (aBPM) takes all of a player’s box score contributions (creating a raw BPM), then looks at every single possession for each team, taking each player’s BPMs into consideration to calculate the value of non-statistical contributions. The output is the net points per 100 possessions that player contributes to his team. Add up the aBPMs of all five players on the floor, and you have the value of that five-man lineup.
Here’s Arkansas’ most-common five-man lineup with each player’s aBPM:
- Anthony Black +6.8
- Nick Smith Jr. +6.9
- Ricky Council IV +6.6
- Makhi Mitchell +8.7
- Trevon Brazile +4.8 / Jordan Walsh +2.5
So as a team, Arkansas’ most-used lineup gets worse by 2.3 points per 100 possessions when Walsh replaces Brazile. Walsh has been an excellent defender who is very much a work in progress on offense. He seemingly has value as a slasher and cutter who can finish at the rim, but we haven’t seen much of that so far. He’s not been a dominant rebounder and his forays into the perimeter game haven’t yielded results. But now he has a major opportunity to step up and look like a 5-star.
However, we aren’t done, as Walsh cannot fully replace all of Brazile’s minutes while maintaining his own. Walsh and Brazile together were 1.21 game-positions with their current minutes. Assuming Walsh’s minutes jump from 50% to about 80%, that leaves 0.41 game-positions – about 16 minutes per game – that need to be filled by someone else.
Here are some potential candidates:
- Jalen Graham. Graham is now Arkansas’ only volume scorer that’s taller than 6’7. Graham is a very different kind of player than Brazile, but he has a nice arsenal of finesse low-post moves that would allow the Hogs to punish teams that can’t defend the post. With the Mitchell twins as defense-and-rebounding specialists, Graham’s value as a change-of-pace offensive forward definitely goes up now. His aBPM of +5.8 is actually better than Brazile (remember aBPM adjusts for all players on the floor, even the other team, so the fact that he’s had a lot of minutes against backups is baked into the numbers), but I doubt Eric Musselman will want to play him if his defensive intensity doesn’t improve.
- Barry Dunning. Dunning is very long and athletic. He’s not Brazile, particularly on offense, but he would give some length and athleticism. Muss has already given him some important minutes – and even a start! – so it’s not a stretch to think he could find an opportunity.
- Devo Davis. Davis won’t take Brazile’s spot, but this injury increases the pressure on Davis to provide value on offense, as the Hogs are down a key perimeter player and Davis is the only backup guard in the rotation. His aBPM of minus-1.5 is rough, and it’s largely because he’s been a poor shooter throughout his career.
The Hogs don’t get any more cupcakes to test out lineups on, as the big battle with Oklahoma looms on Saturday.
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