Just how valuable was Kevin McCullar?

As you know, I have a proprietary rating system that rates every game for every team and of course does a composite rating for all teams. I though it would be interesting to see how KU performed overall when Kevin was in the lineup and when he was not. So I have 4 numbers to share.

--The first number is the average rating for KU when Kevin was playing.
-- The 2nd is the average rating when Kevin was not playing
-- The third is the 1st 20 games of the season since Kevin was injured in the 20th game, so essentially a healthy Kevin.
-- The 4th is the average for games 21-33, or the games sans Kevin or when Kevin was playing injured.

1. 81.14
2. 74.79
3. 83.78
4. 73.19

If you take those ratings and project where that would rank KU among all teams, here are the results.

1. 22nd
2. 106th
3. 10th
4. 131st

So bottom line, with a healthy Kevin, KU was a top 10 team but with a injured Kevin KU was not even in the top 100 (131st). That is just an unbelievable dropoff. But the "rest of the story" is not that Kevin was necessarily that great (although he was playing at a very high level) but that the difference between Kevin and his backup was that great. This is equally a stat that shines the light on both Kevin's contribution and the complete lack of bench strength this past season. Never should there be that much dropoff from the loss of 1 player. Even a player of Kevin's caliber.

I'm really rooting for Kevin here in New York. It's unfortunate that he's still recovering from his injury from last year, which I think is certainly something to be concerned about. Hoping the Knicks see something in him that they think is worth the rehab efforts.