...from the free throw line!

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=13048038

Honestly, what surprises me with that guy is how many steals he's had.

what's surprising about his steals?

Yanks, the team plays fb offense, he is a freak athlete for d3. You got to hit him if you want him to stop, otherwise is dunking it! I would say, great recruiting... I would take that guy on any of my d3 teams and back-up at the d2 level.

you left out the 96 ath in the fb/press against a sim with 2 players over 40 ath and neither better than 44, shouldn't that be somewhat expected?

I don't think 25 made FTM should be expected, but of course this guy should do well against hapless teams

I'll be honest and will most likely be in the minority. First off, keep in mind that this player that went to the free throw line 28 times had a speed rating of 52 and a ballhandling rating of 37. He was also going up against a fullcourt press, so he was facing double teams at times as well. If he had the whole package, 90+ speed, ballhandling, athleticism, low post and high IQ, then I think you could make a case for someone having that much success. I take nothing away from the coach that recruited that player and utilized the strategy to his advantage, however I feel this is something within the game that needs to be looked into.

Dude's a freak.

A freak athlete has an outlier game against bleep bleep awful competition. So what?

You don't need "the whole package" to succeed at d3 with an upper-90s ATH. Nothing to look into. He dominated weaker competition.

Posted by yanks250125 on 4/8/2016 11:56:00 AM (view original):
what's surprising about his steals?

Steals depend almost entirely on speed. A lot of guys on your team seem to be getting a lot more steals than I'd anticipate based on their speed ratings. Maybe they're making lots of hay against the weak teams on your schedule, I don't know, didn't look at it all that closely. But to see a guy with below-average speed for his position at 2+ steals is pretty unusual.

Posted by jsajsa on 4/8/2016 2:31:00 PM (view original):
A freak athlete has an outlier game against bleep bleep awful competition. So what?

Before we going further into a discussion, we have to definite exactly what athleticism is and how it relates to the game. Jumping ability? agility? Quickness?

Posted by dahsdebater on 4/8/2016 3:55:00 PM (view original):

Posted by yanks250125 on 4/8/2016 11:56:00 AM (view original):
what's surprising about his steals?

Steals depend almost entirely on speed. A lot of guys on your team seem to be getting a lot more steals than I'd anticipate based on their speed ratings. Maybe they're making lots of hay against the weak teams on your schedule, I don't know, didn't look at it all that closely. But to see a guy with below-average speed for his position at 2+ steals is pretty unusual.

I'd think defense plays a bigger part in steals than speed. This guy (and my team, like jsa said) are owning horrible competition. My opinion was that 25 FTM was beyond a simple outlier of a game, that's why I created this. But imagine if his BH and SPD were better.

nope speed is more important, ath/def is hard to tell which is more important because they are highly linked, however I'd say ath is more important. Because of this:

you can have high speed low def players average a high amount steals or an average ath high speed low defense get a lot of steals,

in my mind making it go speed>ath>def for the press.

and 25 FTA by a fastbreal/press team with a 90+ ath/def guy against terrible competition will happen a lot, it's just that teams like that don't play teams like you did. if we watched mfnmyers he probably has 1-3 games a season where a guy hits 20+ FTA, and I've seen it from motion/press teams guys hit 20+ FTA so I think it's an outlier more in the fact we don't see your level and build of teams play teams of that quality.

It's not a negative things, but it's not extraordinary imo and I beleive what everyone else is saying, an outlier for that type of player and competition would probably be closer to 35 FTA or more. Anything else is like yeah, that should be expected at a decent rate in the situation

0nly: I agree that in my observation, SPD is the driving factor for steals (it is a certainty for Guards). And also in my observation, ATH and DEF seem to be almost equal and both secondary to SPD where steals are concerned. Steals are obviously not the only thing that matters in playing good defense though. Opponent Shooting Percentage (OPS) and Defensive Rebounding (DR) are also key, as are other defensive 'turnovers which are not steals' (TONS).

My observation is that DEF is certainly key to lowering OPS and also increasing TONS. And ATH (along with REB) is key in DR .. so getting exactly the correct mix of the 3 (SPD, ATH, DEF) is not as straight forward as getting steals.

But, as others have said, specifically for this player on this team, the opponents quality is, IMHO, the main reason for this guy's steal totals. Certainly his outstanding ATH, average BH and PER, and what looks like a -2 setting for 3-Point shooting is going to get him a lot of free throws .. especially against inferior defensive competition.

EDIT:
Looking at this further though, I do see that Swanson did average 1.9 steals per game in your Non-Conf schedule, which was against pretty good competition. Swanson consistently had at least one steal every Non-Conf game .. and he had 3 games out of 10 with 3 (or more) steals.

So, it does seem that an extremely high ATH/DEF combo can also get you steals with speed being not so good, at least at D3. mfnmyers does sometimes get steals with his teams and average speed guards. At least steals in the 1.5-1.9 per game range.