Twelve games into the season, there are arguably more questions than answers with the Mason’s Men’s Basketball Team than we hoped for by this time of the season. The Patriots are at 7-5, mainly in part to, for the second straight season, utterly collapsing during the midseason tournament. Those three losses to BC, Belmont and Buffalo still hurt me. There’s questions over the teams offense, our ability to shoot free throws, our lack of steals, and I could go on and on. One of the bigger questions that have come up however stems from the play of Josh Oduro.
Oduro has still been the Patriots best player so far this year, don’t get me wrong. He’s our leading scorer, tied for leading rebounder with Ticket and has added a passing game this year. Oduro is also averaging nearly two assists more a game on average this season than last, which is a nice addition to his game from prior years.
However, Mason fans frustrations on his play are understandable at face value. Oduro, so far, has not seemed like the dominant, “take over the game” player he was last year. And at face value his points total shows that. So far Oduro is averaging 4 points less per game than last years total so far. That, combined with some struggles with turnovers and early foul trouble, has some Mason fans calling for more of Oduro’s new backup, Ginika Ojiako.
The 6’10” transfer from Virginia Tech was arguably the most interesting transfer brought in by Kim English this offseason. Ojiako is a big body that Mason hasn’t had in many years, but was still considered a very raw player. That’s been shown at multiple times this season, but that doesn’t take away that at some points Ojiako has played better than Oduro has, at least in the eyes of some in the fanbase.
Looking at the stats, this seems to be a slight recency bias from the fanbase. Plus/Minus is not a tell all stat, but it can tell us some things. It can show how the teams playing when a player is involved in action, and it can show who is more effective when on the court. For example, if a player is a +7 in his time on the court but only scored 3 points, it says that a player isn’t the most effective on offense, but could be a key reason why the team is doing well on defense when this hypothetical player is on the court. On the flip, if a player scored 16 points, but the they end up a -8, then that player may have defensive inefficiencies that he can’t make up for on the offensive side of the ball.
In the last 5 games (Hofstra, Toledo, UMES, Tulane, ODU) the average plus/minus total for Ojiako is only +.8, which is expected for a player who’s only averaged just over 12 minutes in those five games (and would arguably be less than that if not for necessary minutes last night because of Oduro’s foul trouble.) Oduro on the other hand is a +24(!!!) on average over the last five games. That should answer our question pretty easily, but not so fast my friends. That number is boosted by Oduro’s +26 against lowly UMES two weeks ago. Otherwise, without the outlier, Oduro was a -.5 average in his plus/minus totals for the games against Hofstra, Toledo, Tulane and ODU. Not as great looking.
Going deeper into advanced stats, they do show Ojiako being a more effective player on offense than Oduro. However, in something that may be a surprise to the eye test, Oduro beats out Ojiako in defensive statistics, and as previously mentioned, has added a passing ability to his game that definitely helps Mason in their overall offense. In general, recent struggles aside, Oduro is still George Mason’s best player, and not by a small amount either.
However, looking at the data, I think there’s an argument that Oduro and Ojiako should be spending more time on the court together to create more spacing for the team. The two bigs system is something that HC Kim English has mentioned some interest in, specifically regarding A-10 play. Mason has struggled at getting to the basket this season, even with Oduro on the floor for a majority of the time. Ojiako would help that, and Oduro could take advantage of his definitely improved passing ability to find easy looks for Ojiako. Asserting themselves in the paint would also open up the floor for shooters like Victor Bailey, Ticket Gaines and DeVon Cooper, which would help the teams offense in general overall in my opinion. With how wide open the A-10 looks this year, Mason needs to look for any gain they can on offense, and giving more time and more looks to Ginika Ojiako might be part of the solution.
