First off, congrats to Mike Smith for winning the A-Sun POY vote. I've thought for a while that he may be among the most underrated players in the league, so it's nice to see him get recognized.

But did he have the best year this year?

I plugged the A-Sun composite box scores into Dean Oliver's "Basketball on Paper" stat formulation to see which players produced the most wins for their team this year.

And this year, the winner is:

Ayron Hardy of Jacksonville (4.47 wins) -- Second-best overall numbers on both offense and defense. Only double-digit scorer on the third-best team in the league. Also notice that ETSU had 4 guys in the Top 20, Belmont had 7, and Jacksonville only had one.

The rest of the Top 5:

LaDaris Green, Kennesaw (3.90 wins) (possible MVP, given the number of games his team won).
Jordan Campbell, Belmont (3.56 wins)
Josh Slater, Lipscomb (3.56 wins)
Mike Smith, ETSU (3.31 wins)

Second-Team All-Stat-Sheet:

Isaiah Brown, ETSU (3.18 wins)
Mick Hedgepeth, Belmont (3.11 wins)
Ian Clark, Belmont (3.04 wins)
Eric Griffin, Campbell (3.03 wins)
Kerron Johnson, Belmont (2.75 wins)

Honorable Mention:

Markieth Cummings (KSU), Mark Hall (MER), Adnan Hodzic (LIP), Micah Williams (ETSU), Corey Waldon, (STET), Matt Sauey (UNF), Justin Tubbs (ETSU), Scott Saunders (BEL), Brian Mills (MER), Jon House (BEL).

Best defensive numbers:

1. Josh Slater (mostly because he stole the ball a lot)
2. Ayron Hardy
3. Langston Hall (MER)
4. Marlon Rivera (FGCU)
5. Torrey Craig (USCU)

This system likes guys who rebound, don't miss a lot of shots, and play a key role in their team's defensive strength (2's or 3's). Likewise it downgrades guys who miss a lot of shots (a la James Florence last year), big guys on teams that play bad 2-point defense (Adnan Hodzic, come on down), and guards on teams that don't defend 3's well.

To its credit, this system recognized just how dominant Belmont was this year, attributing 21% of all of the quality play in the entire league to Belmont players. As to their balance, the Bruins' top 8 "stat sheet" guys combined to create over 19 wins, but no single player was credited with more than 3.56.

What I'm curious about is this: Those of you who have seen a lot more games in person than I have, how does this way of looking at the numbers line up with your own "eyeball test" of who's good? Do you put more faith in the All-Conference and POY voters because they actually watch the games instead of crunching numbers, or do you put less faith in them for the same reason?