Thread: Anthony Davis' Ability to Not Foul and Block Shots

If you don't already know who Ken Pomeroy is, he is a mathematical guru who breaks down every team in college basketball to come up with crazy statistical analysis on a game by game basis.

KenPom.com looks at the uncanny ability of Anthony Davis to block shots and not foul.

But Davis’s 2.6 fouls committed per 40 minutes played is just a number that by itself doesn’t mean much to me. It turns out that this number, when combined with his block rate, is rather spectacular. To give it some context, I went back at looked at past shot-blocking greats that went on to play in the NBA (or at least tried to) in order to see how Davis’s combination of block and foul rate stacks up.

Blk PF Min PF/40 Blk/40 Blk/PF
Adonal Foyle - Jr. 180 60 1055 2.3 6.8 3.0
Anthony Davis - Fr. 120 50 772 2.6 6.2 2.4
Hasheem Thabeet - Jr. 152 90 1145 3.1 5.3 1.7
Jarvis Varnado - Sr. 170 88 1141 3.1 6.0 1.9
Dikembe Mutombo - Jr. 151 91 1090 3.3 5.5 1.7
Marcus Camby - Jr. 128 87 1011 3.4 5.1 1.5
David Robinson - Jr. 207 100 1187 3.4 7.0 2.1
Shaquille O'Neal - Jr. 157 86 959 3.6 6.5 1.8
Emeka Okafor - So. 155 98 1087 3.6 5.7 1.6
Hassan Whiteside - Fr. 182 82 889 3.7 8.2 2.2
Justin Williams - Sr. 163 93 900 4.1 7.2 1.8
Alonzo Mourning - Sr. 169 102 962 4.2 7.0 1.7
Theo Ratliff - Sr. 144 95 912 4.2 6.3 1.5
Shawn Bradley - Fr. 177 109 984 4.4 7.2 1.6

There’s only one mega-shot blocker with an NBA resume that has not committed at least three fouls per 40 minutes and that was Colgate’s Adonal Foyle, who was picking on non-scholarship Patriot League opponents in the late ‘90’s. Davis isn’t immune to foul trouble, obviously, but among shot-blockers he’s as foul-proof as one gets.

The only games where his minutes were seriously limited due to fouls were against Old Dominion and Indiana. Those were two of the five games where he’s played fewer than 28 minutes. The other three were non-competitive contests. It also helps that Davis has committed just three charges this season, so he’s not going to pick up fouls on offense very often.While I’m not sold on the idea of Kentucky’s defense being the best in the land, or even that the Wildcats are clearly the best team in the country, one thing is clear: A strategy to challenge Davis in the hope of getting him in foul trouble is likely going to end in rejection.

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Davis is the greatest shot blocker i have ever seen, is there a stat for how many times he recovers the blocked shot?