It doesn't take an analyst to notice that Julian Welch is playing better than he was at the start of the season. If you've watched the games at all, you've likely observed what seems like a major uptick.
I wanted to see just how significant the change was, so I dug into his stats.
The Gophers have played exactly 12 games now -- six with Trevor Mbakwe, five without him and one when he tore his ACL midgame and played 21 minute. For the sake of simplicity, I split those into the first six and last six games.
For Welch, the turning point clearly came on Nov. 25, in the second game of the Old Spice Classic, against Indiana State. He has said that's when his hurting ankle started to feel better, and the numbers agree.
So I also calculated his splits with the Nov. 25 game– the sixth game of the year – in both the first half split and the second, to see the full impact of his health. Of course, two games later, Welch was in the starting lineup as well.
From the first six games to last six, when Welch's minutes went from 18.3 to 27.6, his …
- Field goal percentage went from 45 to 54
- Average number of baskets per game went from 2.16 to 4.3Rebounds went from 1.6 to 2.1 per game
- Total points shot up from 6.6 to 14 per game
- Assist-to-turnover ratio went from 0.8-to-1 to 1.16-to-1
Calculated with the Nov. 25 in the second half of the split (meaning we're looking at the first five games and then the last seven), the line looks like this:
Field goal percentage went from 38 to 55
Average number of baskets went from 1.6 to 4.4
Rebounds from .80 to 2.7
Total points from 4.6 to 14.4.
