What to expect from elite freshmen (cont.)

3. Only top-10 recruits tend to be "major contributors" or "go-to guys" on offense as freshmen.

When kenpom.com breaks down a team's possession usage, players who use more than 28 percent of possessions are "go-to guys", between 24-28 percent are "major contributors," between 20-24 percent are "significant contributors," between 16-20 percent are "role players," and between 12-16 percent have "limited roles."

For example, of the members of Texas' absurdly good 2006 recruiting class who played more than half the team's minutes in '06-07, second-ranked Durant was a go-to guy (31.6 percent of possessions), 29th-ranked D.J. Augustin was significant (22.8 percent), 15th-ranked Damion James was a role player (17.1 percent) and unranked Justin Mason was a limited-role player (14.5 percent).

The top chart to the right shows that only top-10 recruits' average possession usage (24.7 percent) fell above the "major" threshold. Top 11-40 recruits' average usage fell into the "significant" zone, while averages beyond that alternated between the significant and "role" zones. This season's freshman class, which isn't nearly as strong as the '06 and '07 crops, isn't likely to produce more than a few major players outside the RSCI's top 10. Kentucky's Wall, Georgia Tech's Derrick Favors (No. 1 overall), Kansas' Xavier Henry (No. 6), Cincinnati's Lance Stephenson (No. 8) and Florida's Kenny Boynton (No. 9) are the most logical high-volume possession-users -- and after that crew, it's slim pickings.

The lower chart shows the decline in offensive efficiency as one moves down the RSCI rankings. Top-30 players were the only ones who consistently averaged over a point per possession (and thus had average offensive ratings higher than 100). Players with ratings below 100 tend to be liabilities, while players above 120 are major assets. North Carolina's title team last season had four starters with 120-plus offensive ratings: Tyler Hansbrough (124.0), Wayne Ellington (123.1), Danny Green (121.1) and Ty Lawson (who ranked first in the country at 134.3).

4. Centers and power forwards outside the top 20 see significantly fewer minutes as freshmen than their counterparts in the top 20.

I made four groupings of recruits from the 255-man list -- point guards, wing guards, wing forwards and power forwards/centers -- and analyzed their statistics separately, grouping them into larger brackets (1-20s, 21-40s, 41-60s, 61-80s, 81-100s) to create better sample sizes. The chart below shows how minutes played differed by RSCI bracket and position.

Point-guard minutes dropped only 0.1 percent (from a 67.0 percent average to 66.9 percent) from the top-20 bracket to the 21-40 bracket, suggesting excellent depth at the position over the previous three seasons. Power-forward/center minutes, meanwhile, dropped 28.3 percent (from a 60.8 percent to 32.5 percent) from the top-20 bracket to the 21-40 bracket -- solid proof that most non-five-star big men tend to be mutli-year projects rather than instant-impact freshmen.

5. Near the bottom of the top-100 list, you're more likely to get quality offense out of wing forwards (threes or perimeter fours) than any other position.

The chart below shows how Offensive Rating changed by RSCI bracket and position:

All four position groupings (point guards, wing guards, wing forwards, and power forwards/center) start have Offensive Ratings of 106-plus for their first bracket, then begin declining. Wing forward is the only position with an average offensive rating of 100-plus throughout the entire RSCI, however -- and the average rating of its 61-80 bracket (106.5) is almost equal to that of its 1-20 bracket (106.7).

There have been some impressive sleepers at wing forward with rankings of 61 and above: Purdue's Robbie Hummel had a 126.7 rating as the 62nd-ranked freshman in '07-08, Vanderbilt's Jeffery Taylor had a 106.6 rating as the 97th-rated freshman in '08-09, and West Virginia's Da'Sean Butler had a 107.1 rating as the 99th-ranked freshman in '06-07. All three of those players are All-America candidates this season.

The sleeper in this year's freshman class might be Alabama's Tony Mitchell, a non-qualifier from '08 who's ranked 93rd in the RSCI. He scored 24 points in the Tide's second game, against Jackson State, and is shooting 57.5 percent from the field thus far. He could singlehandedly keep the trend of underrated wing forwards alive.