The Overhyped Club Is Now Seeking Members
You know what really grinds my gears, America? Players and teams that get way more hype than they deserve. Any discussion of that topic usually centers on Red Sox and Yankees coverage, but college basketball is certainly not immune. Dick Vitale's passion for the ACC is borderline obsessive, and Duke is always a lock to have an ESPN game every week.

My current target for the Overhyped Club is Syracuse's Gerry McNamara. This otherwise cool photo series by SI.com that listed him as the country's #4 point guard probably set me off, but it's been building for a while. Remember the big debate last year about whether Duke's J.J. Redick or Arizona's Salim Stoudamire was the better shooter, and how Dickie V kept trying to include McNamara in the discussion? I was as baffled as anyone.

Don't get me wrong, McNamara is good, and he's certainly had his moments. He really made a name for himself when he hit the six threes to help Syracuse win the NCAA title his freshman year, and that 40+ point tournament game as a sophomore didn't hurt his reputation, either. He's just not great, or at least not as great as so many people seem to think.

Yoni Cohen, whose site is the center of the college basketball blogging universe and whose writing now appears at Fox Sports, recently called McNamara "as a good a shooter as you'll find north of Durham, North Carolina." Dickie V thought he was one of the three best shooters in the country last year. And SI tells us he's the fourth best PG in college basketball? I'm not buying it.

First off, here's a quick comparison of Redick, Stoudamire, and McNamara from last season.

Player	O Rtg	%Poss	3 pt%	3A / FGA	eFG%
J.J. Redick	124	24.8	40.3	0.606	53.0
Salim Stoudamire	129	21.9	50.4	0.571	64.7
Gerry McNamara	114	23.7	34.0	0.727	49.3

There's a little unfairness in comparing McNamara to Redick, since Gerry handled the ball a lot more, and the resulting TOs brought down his Offensive Rating, but I think the shooting numbers speak for themselves. His effective FG% (traditional FG% adjusted for the extra points from threes) is very pedestrian. Redick's was pretty plain, too, but his knack for drawing a ton of fouls (and shooting 94% at the line) created a very nice offensive rating. For my money, Stoudamire was the best shooter anywhere last year, and one of the most exciting players to watch, too.

So what justification does SI have for ranking McNamara at number 4 in their point guard list? They say

"McNamara started all 34 games a year ago and all 100 in his career. He averaged
15.8 points per game last season and had 168 assists, by far the most on the
team. He's the Orange's all-time leader in 3-point attempts with 823 and
3-pointers made with 297."

They also mention that he was all-Big East, but that's subjective anyway so I'll toss that aside for now.

Can you think of a shooting point guard who (1) started all of his team's games last year, (2) had a decent scoring average, (3) led his team in assists, and (4) will soon break his school's records for threes made and attempted?

Hmmmmmmm. *Deep thinking...........*

Jeff Horner
1 - started 33 of 33 games 32 of 33 games last year (almost forgot the post-Northwestern debacle)
2 - 14.0 ppg on the season, but he averaged 14.8 in the 13 games after Pierce left
3 - passed his way to 180 assists
4 - is not far from breaking Chris Kingsbury's old shooting records

I'm not going to suggest that Horner is better than McNamara, or even that he's quite on the same level. But I don't think they're that far apart. Consider this........

Gerry McNamara

Season	%Min	O Rtg	%Poss	Pass	TO%	Reb%	FT/FG	eFG%	3pt%
2002-03	88%	115	18.7	20.8	20.8	3.9	0.272	51.8	35.7
2003-04	90%	117	22.8	14.1	18.5	3.8	0.355	51.8	38.9
2004-05	88%	114	23.7	19.5	20.9	3.7	0.293	49.3	34.0

Jeff Horner

Season	%Min	O Rtg	%Poss	Pass	TO%	Reb%	FT/FG	eFG%	3pt%
2002-03	88%	96	17.0	22.4	24.9	6.5	0.307	41.8	27.7
2003-04	92%	117	17.5	19.7	23.3	8.0	0.469	57.4	42.5
2004-05	91%	114	20.9	23.6	19.6	7.0	0.301	52.6	40.8

Some quick notes - that "Pass" rating is a very rough estimate of a player's points produced through assists, per 100 possessions. It can fluctuate considerably when players are put in different roles, but Horner and McNamara played similar roles for their teams, so I threw it in. "FT/FG" is actually free throw attempts per field goal attempt, which is one way of measuring how often a player gets to the line.

I find it quite interesting that McNamara has never broken 40% from downtown, despite his reputation as a sharp shooter. His eFG% has been very normal, too. The national average is something around 50%. If there's one thing you can say for him, though, he has been very consistent. He had a very good year for a freshman, but he hasn't progressed much since then. He's more or less replicated the same production each year.

Horner, like McNamara, has played a ton of minutes ever since his freshmen year (90% would be 36 min in a regulation game). He had a rough going his freshman year, but since then he's found his shooting touch and cut down his turnovers each season. He also grabs considerably more rebounds than McNamara, both offensively and defensively.

One big difference you might have noticed is McNamara's edge in possession usage. Horner has been as low as Iowa's fourth scoring option, with Pierce, Brunner, and Haluska all available to take shots, while McNamara has been Syracuse's second-leading scorer behind Hakim Warrick for the past two years. It's generally considered tougher to maintain a higher efficiency level when using more possessions, so you have to give Gerry some credit there.

Can Horner be effective when using a higher percentage of possesions. I think so - we got a little taste of that after Pierce was kicked off the team last year. In the 12 games against Big Ten opponents sans Pierre, Horner used 24.1% of the possessions with an offensive rating of 108. Pretty decent. I think that'll look even better this year when it's balanced out over a full season schedule that includes some OOC cupcakes.

So all in all, I'll give McNamara the slightest of edges for last season, but if I had to choose a floor general for this year, I'll stay loyal to Horner for sure. And if you're going to rank McNamara as the fourth best point guard in the country, at least give our guy Jeff some recognition too.
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