We’ve used DRIP for the NBA game to measure the best players in the league. Now, it’s available for men’s and women’s college basketball as well.
DRIP has gone back to school to get its degree.
We introduced NBA DRIP, our all-in-one player performance model, in 2021. It evaluates every NBA player’s performance by taking box score, play-by-play and lineup data and projecting each player’s contribution to his team’s offensive and defensive ratings for the regular season.
Now, we’re bringing DRIP to men’s and women’s college basketball and using the model to project the performance of every player in Division I. Most of the DRIP calculation will be similar to what we do with the NBA version, so consult that DRIP explainer and subsequent update for more details on how it is calculated.
But there are some key differences with how DRIP is calculated at the collegiate level versus the NBA level.
DRIP Differences
One of the bigger differences between the NBA and college basketball is the variance in competition level.
There are only 450 players on NBA rosters at a given time, but there are over 4,000 players in Division I men’s basketball. Teams also often play games against opponents lower than Division I and those teams are hard to evaluate properly because of limited data. So to ensure that we can adjust for competition properly, only games against other Division I teams are utilized in the model.
Also, with how drastically different each team’s schedule is at the collegiate level, we have to adjust each player’s game-level DRIP to account for the opponent’s TRACR level. NBA teams face similar competition over the course of a full season, but college teams do not, so an adjustment is needed.
DRIP vs. WAR
You may be saying to yourself, “I could’ve sworn I just read a long explainer piece on a new college basketball catch-all stat just a few months ago,” and you’d be correct.
In January, we unveiled Wins Above Replacement and VAPR, which measure the impact a player has had during a season. As we mentioned in that explainer, WAR looks at the actual success a player has had, while DRIP projects future success. Some players may have similar rankings in both models, but there is a difference in how each should be used.
If you’re looking to decide who deserves the player of the year award, you should consult WAR because it measures how a player has actually played. If you’re looking to decide which player is “the best” right now, or who might be better going forward, DRIP is a better starting point because it projects how good players currently are.
If players miss time, they’ll lose out on the chance to accumulate WAR. If players have turned their season around and look significantly better recently, DRIP is likely a more accurate representation of who they are than VAPR. WAR and VAPR already have a ton of utility when evaluating players, but DRIP adds a projection component to more accurately inform nuanced debates about a player’s impact in the past and potential impact in the future.
Leaderboards
To further illustrate the utility of DRIP, check out the following leaderboard in recent college basketball history.
You can see the difference between WAR and DRIP by comparing the top player from 2012-13 to 2024-25. Trey Burke’s 2012-13 season tops the WAR rankings. That season, he played 39 games and averaged 35 minutes.
Zion Williamson’s 2018-19 campaign is the leader in our single-season DRIP rankings even though he only played in 33 games and 30 minutes per game. By the end of his lone college season, Zion’s talent was undeniable. If you combine his conference tournament and NCAA Tournament numbers, he averaged 26.4 points on 67% shooting. He scored at least 23 points in all seven of those games.
Burke had more chances to accumulate WAR and was a great player throughout the 2012-13 season. But Williamson projected out to be the better player at the end of the season. If you want to know who deserves the AP Player of the Year, go with Burke. But if you want to know who will be the better player at the end of the season, go with Williamson.
There are a couple of surprises here (hello, Delon Wright and Jordan Adams!), but all of these players were multi-faceted superstars who did more than score to help their teams win. It’s also worth noting that Cooper Flagg, who started the season shooting poorly, is having an incredibly dominating season for a freshman. He leads all players in DRIP for the 2024-25 season with a DRIP of 9.6, which is the 15th-best since 2012-13.
On the women’s side, you won’t get any surprises.
Caitlin Clark’s final season in college is No. 1, just like it was in WAR. No matter how many all-in-one metrics we come up with, it’s a safe bet Clark will come out on top.
There are only five players representing the top 10 women’s basketball seasons by DRIP since 2014-15, and it’s a group of players you’d expect.
Paige Bueckers won the 2020-21 Wooden Award, Naismith Award and AP Player of the Year as a freshman and is still dominant this year. Hannah Hidalgo is the brightest star on a team full of stars at Notre Dame. Sabrina Ionescu walked so Caitlin Clark could run. Breanna Stewart would need multiple rooms to display all the accolades she collected in college before she went on to become one of the best players in the WNBA.
As you can see, there is some overlap with DRIP and WAR, but enough of a difference in ranking and utility that both are very useful. With the NCAA tournaments right around the corner, it will be useful to see who the best players in the game right now are, and DRIP is the perfect tool for this assessment.
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College Basketball DRIP is Here: Our Daily-Updated Rating of Individual Performance Opta Analyst.
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