On the offensive end, then, the ancillary statistics give a better job of demonstrating Saunders’ importance to the Crimson offense. While Sears is a more efficient player, he is asked to do significantly less and is viewed more favorably by standard statistics that tend to disproportionately favor low-usage power forwards One needs to look no farther than ESPN’s own PER rankings—which share a lot of similarities to the Win Shares ones—to see names like Brandan Wright, Rudy Gobert, and Alexis Ajinca among the league’s top 25. Given this bias, Saunders’ numbers look all the more impressive. In this context, his high usage rate is a boon, not a mark against him.  

The last relevant area is look at is the player’s performance in important games, essentially leveraging his stats for the situation. Here, Saunders comes out significantly ahead. In Yale’s two conference losses—and its near-loss Saturday at home against Penn—Sears has been practically invisible on the court, averaging just 8.3 points and taking only about seven shots a game. He had six turnovers in a must-win last Saturday against Penn where Yale trailed for nearly 35 minutes before making a late run.

Saunders, by contrast, has been at his best when the team needs him most. He had 33 points and 10 rebounds against Brown, carrying a static team and tipping in his own miss as time expired for the win. The next night at Yale, he led all scorers with 16 points and added five rebounds and three assists while holding the Elis’ best perimeter play—senior Javier Duren—to three-for-11 shooting. Against Columbia a week later, he was responsible for 18 points, six assists, and five rebounds in a four-point win. Last weekend, after being the only player to show up (19 points, 11 rebounds, no turnovers) offensively in a 57-49 loss to Cornell, he had 21 points (on just eight shots) and five assists as Harvard comfortably dispatched Columbia.

Ultimately, with the two still having their biggest game to play, the award is still up in the air. Using what I assume was the logic of last year’s committee, I’m guessing it will go to the best player on the best team—meaning that a win Friday night could have double the implications for the winning team’s star. Through 12 games, however, Saunders has established himself as clearly the front-runner. 

Maodo Lo:

By Kurt Bullard

“What these young bloods have to understand is that this game, has always been, and will always be about buckets.”

So says the all-time NBA great Bill Russell. And if you’re using the 11-time NBA champion’s criterion, Maodo Lo is the obvious choice to take home the title of Ivy League Player of the Year. 

Maodo Lo has been putting up points at a higher clip than any other player in the Ivy League this year, averaging 18.1 points per game in league play. Lo is forced to shoulder more of an offensive load than Saunders or Sears, taking 13 shots per game—one more than Saunders and three more than Sears.

His defining performance of the year came last Saturday against Harvard. Lo dropped 33 points against the 24th-ranked defense in the country, effortlessly going 13-for-21 on the night. The rest of his team struggled on the night, only combing to go 13-for-28 from the field.

Not only is he getting buckets more often than anyone else in the conference, but he’s also been scoring efficiently. Lo boasts the highest effective field goal rate in the conference with a 58% clip heading into the last season, higher than both Wesley Saunders and Justin Sears.

Saunders dropped 33 in an overtime game against Brown, but only shot 41 percent from the field when doing so against the 218th-ranked Brown defense. Lo one-upped Saunders later in the season, dropping 35 of his own against Brown while shooting 70 percent from the field. Lo is not only scoring more points, but he’s doing so more while not taking away as many shots from his teammates as Saunders. 

Sure, some will point to the lack of wins that the Lions have at this late stage of the season as a reason why Lo doesn’t deserve the award, but there’s only so much that one player can do for his team. The Lions suffered a huge blow when Alex Rosenberg decided to withdraw from Columbia to preserve his final year of eligibility after injuring his foot. He had been named first-team All-Ivy a year before, averaging 16 points per game. The fact that Lo has been able to score efficiently despite being the team’s obvious go-to player is impressive in itself.

Some will also point to Lo’s relatively high defensive rating on the season as reason why he isn’t the best player in the conference. But his 106.4 defensive rating in conference play (compared to Saunders’ 91.6 and Sears’ 89.9) is inflated by the fact that his overall team struggles defensively. Columbia ranks 255th in the conference – second to last in the Ivy League. Both Yale and Harvard play significantly better defense by this metric, so it’s tough to compare individual defensive metrics between the players.

Dion Waiters said it best after a 24-point performance earlier this year, tweeting that “Men lie. Women lie. Buckets [don’t].”