I’ve been crunching NCAA to Europe numbers from the Draftexpress stats database recently. Here are some of the results.

There is data on two international (Euroleague, Eurocup) and five domestic leagues (ACB, A1, Lega A, Adriatic and Pro A). Seasons range from 2001/02 to 2012/13. Therefore the data at the maximum includes 11th year Euro veterans: A player’s 2012/13 European season compared to his 2001/02 (final) NCAA season. Those are relatively rare.

This is evident in the following graph that includes every case of Euro appearance by a former NCAA player:

The lack of nine-, ten- and eleven-year veterans would likely be less dramatic if we had 1990 to 2001 data.

What the graph does indicate, though, is the existence of the Pro A as an “entry league”, whereas the ACB, to go along with a general lack of former NCAA players (due to limited non-European spots), has been home to far more three- and four-year players than rookies.

1st year translations

Looking at minute-and pace-adjusted data from the final NCAA season to first Euro season, these are the trends:

Significant rise:

• Steals increase by 19.1 percent
• Personal Fouls increase by 25.1 percent

Staying level:

• 2FG percentage stays practically even (an increase by 0.8 percent)
• Turnovers drop by 1.1 percent

Moderate drop:

• 3FG percentage (more on that later) drops by 6.6 percent (that is not percentage points; the drop in percentage points is from 36.7% NCAA shooting to 34.3% Euro shooting)
• Offensive rebounding drops by 5.6 percent
• Defensive rebounding drops by 8.2 percent

Significant drop:

• Points scored drop by 11.2 percent
• Free throw attempts drop by 20.5 percent
• Assists drop by 20.2 percent
• Blocked shots drop by 32.4 percent

Note: The distribution of cases between these seven leagues is not balance. For example cases of NCAA to Pro A account for almost 1/4 of all cases. The performance drop from NCAA to the top leagues is expectedly deeper than from NCAA to Pro A.

Three point shooting throughout the years

Once landed in Europe, average player performance goes on a typical aging curve. See three point percentage:

(Again, little data for eight-year veterans and onwards, hence the fluctuations on the downward trend.)

Shooters are Spain-bound

The average ACB first-year import outperforms his peers in scoring efficiency:

What is evident: Previous NCAA three point shooting performance is high across the board. Euro-imports outperformed the average NCAA 2001-2012 three point percentage of 34.97 percent during their NCAA careers.