Readers chime in: grading Chris Mullin’s third year; who was the impact player?

A few weeks ago, we asked our readers to give their opinion on Chris Mullin’s third season in the form of a letter grade.

Surprisingly, Chris Mullin received an average grade of a bit below a B. We certainly see there is a healthy tail toward the F’s, and a spike at C+. But apparently, quite a few people do not feel like the job was a failure, in this unscientific poll.

Here is what our readers had to say by letter grade [click to embiggen]:

Why?

We graded him a bit lower than the consensus, but last year, the team DID win more games than the season before, while losing an integral player in Marcus LoVett. That one player is not worth five wins, but he was worth 3.6 points over a replacement player in his freshman year, per Bart Torvik’s numbers. That’s not nothing.

In a related note, we also asked which player had the most impact on the season.

The three top vote getters:

Shamorie Ponds, 65%

Justin Simon, 18%

Marcus LoVett, 13%

Marvin Clark II received 2% of the vote, and Tariq Owens and Amar Alibegovic each earned 1%.

We made a point of saying that the impact player could be a good impact or a bad impact. Quite a few people saw that LoVett’s midseason injury and then departure affected the squad a lot.

Was it the only reason for the swoon? Probably not. (Did some people think LoVett’s departure improved the team? That could be possible, let us know in the comments.)

But obviously, we have two takeaways:

+ many readers are willing to be patient with Chris Mullin, despite a year that fell below expectations, and

+ the high-scoring Shamorie Ponds is (obviously) the most important piece to this team.