Remember when everyone was making that hullabaloo over Maryland's poor graduation rate? Well, chalk one up for the Terps: Greivis Vasquez has officially received his degree. The utterly heartwarming video, via CSN, is below:
Graduating was a big reason Vasquez wanted to come back to school; he's the first of his family with a degree, so it was big for everyone involved. Landon Milbourne and Eric Hayes, Maryland's two other seniors, also graduated. Hopefully we can stop using outdated statistics now.
If that didn't warm your heart sufficiently, perhaps you'll be encouraged by some statistical projections from John Hollinger, the NBA's reigning statistical guru and master of PER: Hollinger used his mostly accurate Draft Rater formula to predict the most productive players in the NBA, and yes, Greivis scored highly (it's an Insider article).
Vaz came in at 10th in the rankings, behind just John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Evan Turner, Greg Monroe, Derrick Favors, Xavier Henry, Luke Babbitt, Al-Farouq Aminu, and Wes Johnson. That's well ahead of Cole Aldrich, Ed Davis, Eric Bledsoe, Jordan Crawford, and other various players that are usually rated above him. His projected PER would put him on about the same level as Earl Boykins last year; that is, about 6 points and 2 assists per game when coming off the bench.
Not bad numbers. Considering that's generally regarded as his peak around these parts, it seems we're pretty smart folks.
This sort of numbers-based analysis hasn't entered basketball as prominently as it has in baseball, at least not in the front offices, but let's hope a few GMs pay attention to these sort of numbers. Maybe it'll result in a bump or two in Vas' draft standing.