The Case for Darius DeAveiro

Column: Why I believe the Valparaiso junior should win the Valley's Most Improved Player of the Year

As the 2023-24 Valparaiso men’s basketball season begins to wind down, I’m starting to make sense of what has transpired over the last five months.

The arrival of Isaiah Stafford and the emergence of Cooper Schwieger will be defining traits of Valpo’s season, particularly if both players continue to wear the Brown & Gold next season, or even if they radiate in teal and magenta.

That said, when I look back on Roger Powell Jr.’s first season leading the Beacons, there is one player that I’ll remember more than any of the others.

Darius DeAveiro.

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Watching Darius DeAveiro in 2023-24 has been a night and day difference from his two previous seasons at Valpo.

DeAveiro went from surrendering playing time to a walk-on as a freshman in 2021-22 to actually playing fewer minutes as a sophomore last season. He then endured a coaching change, being one of just three leftover players for a new regime that had no ties or relationship with the Canadian point guard.

He emerged as a leader during summer workouts. Where Jerome Palm was in just his second season with the program and senior Connor Barrett was sidelined with injury for much of the year, DeAveiro became the one-man welcoming committee for his new teammates. DeAveiro might not be the point guard talent of NBA players that Powell has coached such as Darius Garland, Jalen Suggs and Andrew Nembhard, but when handed the keys to the Valpo offense, DeAveiro took them and ran.

Entering Sunday’s regular-season finale, DeAveiro is the only player on the roster to start all 30 games. He’s third on the team in scoring (8.2 ppg), second in steals (37), has turned into a serviceable 3-point shooter at 35.6 percent and is nearly 80 percent from the free throw line. DeAveiro also has 165 assists this season (5.5 apg) and is tied with John McIlvain for the third-most in a single-season program history. He sits behind McIlvain (197) and Ali Berdiel (185).

If you’ve been paying attention to Valpo this year, then you’ve already realized that DeAveiro has put together one of the more improbable statistical seasons when compared to his previous outputs.

The problem is, not everyone has been paying attention to Valpo this year. (A subscription to The Victory Bell would change all that!)

I’m going to pull the curtain back a little bit here and if this gets me in trouble with Mike Kern or the Missouri Valley Conference office, I’ll agree to wear a St. Louis Cardinals hat and pose by the Ozzie Smith statue.

As a beat reporter in the Valley, I am part of a group that is tasked with voting for the Most Improved and All-Bench teams. The league Sports Information Directors nominate players from their team and provide us with information that gets funneled through the league office. A ballot gets sent out and we’re asked to reply with our 5-person teams for each grouping.

I knew from the jump that DeAveiro wasn’t going to be named the Most Improved Player of the Year. That will almost assuredly go to Southern Illinois’ Xavier Johnson. After that however, I thought that DeAveiro would be a near unanimous lock for the Most-Improved team. I even tweeted as much.

Then a funny thing started happening. A couple of the Valley beat reporters hit “Reply All” when sending in their ballots and DeAveiro was nowhere to be found. My jaw was on the floor.

Yes, I get it, Valpo is 2-17 in the Valley this year. The team isn’t good and the league’s beat reporters probably aren’t watching the Beacons with the same level of scrutiny that I am. Maybe with my exposure to Valpo, I see things differently.

So, I turned to the numbers. The Valley provided a list of 15 players that were eligible/nominated for the Most-Improved Team. I worked that list down to 10 and then I looked at their conference-only stats from 2022-23 and from this season. (I want to make note that when voting for league awards, I only take into account what players do in Valley games. I don’t care if you pad your stats against East-West University.)

The players that I evaluated were: Quincy Anderson (Murray State), N.J. Benson (Missouri State), Darius DeAveiro (Valparaiso), Duke Deen (Bradley), Ja’Kobi Gillespie (Belmont), Darius Hannah (Bradley), Connor Hickman (Bradley), Xavier Johnson (Southern Illinois), Jayson Kent (Indiana State) and Alston Mason (Missouri State).

I then ranked these players in the following categories: FG%, Field Goals, 3PT%, 3-Pointers, FT%, Free Throws, Points, Rebounds, Assists, Steals and Blocks. My method was taking their conference-only stats from 2022-23 and subtracting those numbers from 2023-24. For example, Jayson Kent shot 46.4 percent from the floor last year and 61.6 percent from the floor this year. He improved his field goal percentage by 15.2 percent, which is tops among the group I examined.

DeAveiro’s numbers from last season to this year are wild. He shot just 20 percent from the 3-point line last year and has more than doubled that to 41 percent while hitting 23 more 3-pointers. Both differences are tops among qualified players. He scored 21 points in league-play last year and is up to 185 this season, a jump of 164 points. Johnson is the only player who has more of a difference in points (230), but he is shooting 12.8 percent worse from the floor this year and 12.4 percent worse from the 3-point line.

The more numbers I looked at, the more it is clear that DeAveiro is one of the most, if not THE most improved player in the Valley. Still, I wanted a total picture. So I ranked each statistical group from 1-10 with 1 being the best and 10 being the worst. The lower score represented the player who improved the most in his all-around statistical game.

And I said I’d never use math after high school.

Call me a homer. Call me a data scientist. Call me whatever, but I’m voting Darius DeAveiro as the Valley’s Most Improved Player of the Year. He won’t win, but I’m telling you in the two decades I’ve been doing this, I’ve never seen a player take the strides that he has in one season.

See you in St. Louis.

Or actually at the Athletics-Recreation Center on Sunday for the regular-season finale.

(Photo courtesy of Valpo Athletics; all the data tabulated by me, a guy who almost failed Statistics in high school)