Ryan Kalkbrenner and the Seven-Foot Case for Big East Player of the Year

The Creighton Bluejays won their sixth straight game this Wednesday, a home victory over a red hot Xavier Musketeers team. In the early part of the game, Ryan Kalkbrenner passed Rodney Buford for the second-most all-time points at Creighton University. He continues to cement himself as not only one of the best players ever to don the blue and white, but as one of the premiere college basketball players in the nation.

And yet, largely, discussion surrounding the Big East Player of the Year centers not around Kalkbrenner, but Kam Jones of Marquette and Eric Dixon of Villanova. And, frankly, it perplexes me as to why the 7'1 senior in Omaha is being overlooked.

Kalkbrenner, especially since the beginning of conference play, has been truly one of a kind. The offensive numbers speak for themselves, He's been exceedingly efficient despite being double-teamed on nearly each post touch.

Then, on the defensive side, I always go back to what Bill Self said of Kalkbrenner, both before and after Kansas's loss to Creighton this December.

"It's impossible to simulate and prepare for his impact on the defensive end," Self noted. After the game, he referred to Kalkbrenner as "a nightmare."

So, let's start with the very basic raw data between the three main POY candidates:

A note -- to be qualified here, a player must play in 75% of their team's games.

For field goal % and three-point %, you have to play 75% of games as well as have a minimum of 5 made field goals per game played. 13 total players qualified for that separate criteria.

	Ryan Kalkbrenner	Kam Jones	Eric Dixon
Points per game	18.3 (#3 in Big East)	18.9 (#2 in Big East)	24.3 (#1 in Big East)
Field goal percentage	66.8% (#1 in BE*)	49.5 (#4 in BE*)	48.5% (#6 in BE*)
Three-point percentage	41.9% (#3 in BE*)	32.7% (#7 in BE*)	46.2% (#1 in BE*)
Rebounds per game	8.4 (#2 in BE)	4.6 (#27 in BE)	5.3 (#16 in BE)
Assists per game	1.5 (#39 in BE)	6.3 (#3 in BE)	2.2 (#27 in BE)
Steals per game	0.7 (#46 in BE)	1.6 (#9 in BE)	0.9 (#33 in BE)
Blocks per game	2.9 (#1 in BE)	0.2 (#51 in BE)	0.3 (#41 in BE)

Obviously, these rudimentary statistical categories don't paint the whole picture; really all it does is bring all of the paint and place it near the canvas. But, there are some conclusions you can make based upon them.

If you take the Big East rank of each category for all three players and add them up, here are the totals:

1. Kalkbrenner (95)

2. Jones (103)

3. Dixon (125)

I do think this speaks to Ryan Kalkbrenner's balance. He's the best defensive player in the conference (more on that later) and also does everything else at a high rate. Jones follows close behind, despite being less efficient offensively, and being lower in the defensive categories. Dixon, however, is quite a ways behind both Kalkbrenner and Jones in this exercise.

Eric Dixon is a staggeringly impressive scorer. I try to shy away from hyperbole, but he is the best pure scorer the Big East has seen since Markus Howard. He takes 35% of Villanova's shots while he's on the court — that's the 15th-highest mark in the country, only one power conference player takes a higher percentage of their team's shots (Markus Burton, ND). And yet, Dixon is doing it while keeping such a high level of efficiency — it's impressive.

However, Dixon doesn't do much else for Villanova. He's a mediocre rebounder, a poor defender by both numerical and analytical data, and he turns the ball over just as often as he gets an assist. On top of that, Villanova is just 5-5 in conference play, and have lost four of their last five games. Winning basketball games should factor in, at least somewhat, into the Player of the Year debate.

Yes, to me, winning matters — even while discussing awards like this one. Ryan Kalkbrenner impacts winning more than any other player in the conference, both by eye test as well as analytical measures. Below you'll find the data to support this, shoutout to CBBAnalytics for this chart. The X-axis is Wins Above Replacement, the Y-axis is Win Shares per 40 minutes played. Ryan Kalkbrenner leads the Big East in both categories. Not only is he the best player in the Big East, he's the most important.

Funnily enough, what I believe Ryan Kalkbrenner's greatest strength in the game of basketball, is hard to document statistically. It's the shots he alters in the paint, and, perhaps even more so, the shots he discourages offenses from taking. Yes, the three-time Big East Defensive Player of the Year leads the Big East in blocked shots again (comfortably) and also has the third most shots blocked in the country.

However, the shots he discourages and alters is even more impressive. Creighton's entire defensive schematic setup is centered around Ryan Kalkbrenner being an elite rim protector. They, nearly always, go overtop screens on the perimeter, in hopes of eliminating the three point shot. The obvious negating factor to that simple strategy is that guards can drive to the rim on a simple ball screen. Well, Creighton and Greg McDermott say — go ahead!

Creighton's drop coverage only works because of Kalkbrenner's ability to challenge and interrupt shots. Despite funneling a lot of traffic to Kalkbrenner in the paint, the Jays hold teams to shooting just 45.7% from inside the three point arc; good enough for 27th in the country. It's not every day that you see a big man affect the amount of shots that Ryan does that aren't tallied as a blocked shot.

Perhaps the most impressive thing, though, is that he does it without fouling.

“Defense is a definite part of the game, and a great part of defense is learning to play it without fouling.” - John R. Wooden

John Wooden was a man I admire so thoroughly, inside and out of the game of basketball. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar always noted the value that Wooden put on being able to play quality defense without fouling. This is something Ryan Kalkbrenner does better than anyone positionally of his caliber in college basketball.

In Wednesday night's game against Xavier, Kalkbrenner picked up two personal fouls in the first half. It was the first time in over a year that that happened. In over a calendar year! For a 7'1 center that experiences the amount of defensive volume that Kalkbrenner does, that's unheard of, truly.

He currently is averaging 1.1 fouls per game played. The average for Centers that play the amount of minutes Kalkbrenner does, is nearly three-times Ryan's foul rate. This is in large part why Creighton fouls less than every team in the nation.

So, Creighton's blackjack style 'basic strategy' is to run opponents off the three point line, contest shots at the rim, and never foul. They do all three exceedingly well — and all of them are thanks to Ryan Kalkbrenner, the man in the middle.

Now, this is no knock on Kam Jones, who's a solid defender in his own right, although in a less impactful way. Jones is probably his team's second or third best perimeter defender.

By way of my earlier argument, I don't think, at this point, Eric Dixon is on the same rung in the Player of the Year debate as Jones and Kalkbrenner. The defensive side of the ball gives the clear edge to Kalkbrenner over Jones. To separate the two even further, there's a few more points I'd like to make:

KenPom.com gives out a 'Game MVP' in each game played. It's a decent indicator of who, in the game, had their hand on the scale the most. It's not an end-all be-all, but it's directionally useful to determine who mattered the most in a specific game. Within Big East play, Ryan Kalkbrenner has seven Game MVP's. Seven. He's been the best player on the floor in 7 out of 10 Big East games.

Kam Jones sits at just three Game MVPs. This shouldn't be all that surprising. We talked about Win Share, we talked about the data. It's not close — Ryan Kalkbrenner impacts games more than anyone else in the conference.

Another breaking point comes in an unlikely form: the three point line. Kalkbrenner has been among the nation's best in field goal percentage in each of the last three seasons. However, this year, he has stepped out and been able to knock down a three point jumper with more consistency. So much so, in fact, that opposing coaches aren't comfortable leaving him moderately unguarded beyond the arc as they were in years past.

Kalkbrenner is shooting 41% from beyond the arc this season, including 10-22 (45%) in conference play. Kam Jones, on the other hand, is shooting just 32% from deep, including a paltry 16-62 (25%) in Big East play. Exterior shooting should be Jones' calling card in this Player of the Year race, but it simply hasn't been.

Today, Creighton heads to Finneran Pavilion to take on Villanova. With a win, the Jays would move to 9-2 in conference play, right at the heels of SJU and Marquette in the Big East title hunt.

Regardless of whether Creighton ends up winning the Big East this season, Ryan Kalkbrenner's #11 jersey will be hung in the rafters at CHI Health Center in Omaha. It should hang there with at least two more accolades encapsulated within it — a fourth Defensive Player of the Year award, and a Big East Player of the Year recognition.

For anyone who accepts the data, and yet still pushes back on the case for Kalkbrenner to be Player of the Year — I suggest you brush up on Occam's Razor.