The Wiz

Injury update on key SF player... Fuchs.. 6'9 245 Fwd 10.4pt 6.6 reb....still listed as questionable with upper body injury. His absence was one of the reasons that SF lost to N Ala (D+) in a buy-in game at home. He is out with an upper body injury. Unofficial reports say he was injured on a personal vehicle...scooter/ motor cycle. Has a swollen face and needs some dental works as of Thur. The Dons have a capable replacement but they will be short on depth if Fuchs can't answer the bell. The computer has moved the spread up to Bills by 9. The machine says look for a big Bills 2nd half if he is missing.

I was answering @juniorbill76 who projected we would lose the final game in the A10 championship by a point with less than a sec...where in that doomsday prediction I said jokingly we would be the last team out...to continue his doomsday scenario. I should have put my response in blue. In reality, the chances of the A10 receiving a 2nd bid are 50%....if we win out and lose the last championship game we most likely would receive a bid.

If that happens we would be the 1st team out.

Right now the best at large seed we could get would be 12th

This is how SF would play slow... They walk the ball up to the mid court line and then go into the weave...at the 3 sec mark they put up a desperation shot that misses and we fast break back for an easy bucket. The next time they weave, Thames steals the ball and goes in for a slam dunk. Bottom line...we need to set the tempo.

In regards to SF and Miss St...both are grade B teams. The computer considered that game a tossup. MSU did not have home court advantage....close by but still an away game. The NCAA says a team must play 3 games in a venue to be considered a home court advantage. Not a surprise outcome and neither are bad teams. I would take a boat load of B type teams in the OOC schedule. While not Q1 teams, these games don't hurt your SOS. This year we have 3 B teams in the OOC. ...GCany, Stfd and SF....SC is a B+. The thing about B teams is we should beat them all the time unless we falter. In other words B teams are just good enough that if you stumble they can win. Looking forward...who are the B teams in the A10 (at least for now)?....Rich, St. B and RI.....St. B and RI are away so they will be tough. And this doesn't even count GW and Day both B+ and VCU at A-. We have our work cut out for us but we can do it.

The Bills enter this game with an A-. While the grade is the same as last time the underlying numbers are strengthening. It is harder to move up once you reach the A- level. If we beat SF by more than the spread and we have a few teams in front of us lose, we might be able to move up to A. At A- you have a 70% chance to Dance...at A it moves up to 90%. The Bills put on a great show at the Chaifetz against C Mich. Good basketball with some spectacular plays. As you will see in the report card below the grades are humming along. One that stands out is FT%...We are not only one of the top shooting FT teams ITN but we are THE top shooting FT team ITN. What a long way we have come since the French days when we were last in D1. AND...we still have more upside...once the 3s start to hit more often. As John Rooney of the Cardinals would say ... keep the line moving. Game preview... SF comes into town with a grade of B. The stats show we are the better team but they could make trouble for us. The problem will be their style of play. They will try to slow things down. The Dons maybe missing a key player...Fuch....a 10pt and 6 reb starting fwrd. If he doesn't play the spread could move into double digits. If he is missing there is even more reason for SF to slow things down. As they are already missing another forward they will be thin upfront. On offense, they are a little better than C Mich., the team we just whupped. But that is where the similarity ends . They are much better on D than CM and that is where they will try to beat us. We should be able to contain their offense ...the question then is will we be able to score. The good news is their 3P D is weak. If we can get back into form and start hitting 3s we should take this game. Report Card.... Change from last card... Off...up....PPG...FG%...2P%....FT....Rebs.....Dn...NONE Def...up...PPG.....2P%...Reb....Dn...none This may be the best report card the Bills have had since I have been doing this. ................SLU..................SF...................SLU........................SF ...........................OFF...................................................DEF.......... PPG...........A+..14th ITN....D+...................B..............................B+ FG%..........A.....................C.....................A+...13TH ITN...........B+ 2P%..........A+..17th ITN...C.....................A+..12TH ITN.............A 3P%..........B-...................B+...................A................................C- FT%.........A+..1st ITN......C-....................................................... Reb..........A-..12TH ITN...B-.....................A-...............................B OFF Rebs = total Bills rebs...DEF Rebs = opp total reb Top 100 In The Nation or the Thames show SLU... FG%...Thames ...12th..up....Brown...73rd...up 2P%....Thames..22nd...up....Brown 71st...up Stls...Thames...80th...up Stls/Foul...Thames...38th ...up Tru Shoot %.....Thames...13th ..up....Brown.. 67th..up...Green...84th...up eFG%...Thames...27th...up...Brown...90th...new...Green...new FT%...Sharma...40th...up Injuries... The Bills....... no injuries SF....... Player POS Injury Updated Status David Fuchs F Upper Body Sun 7 Dec Ques Sat Fuchs is battling an upper body injury, and it is unclear if he will suit up against the Billikens on Saturday. Ndewedo Newbury F Leg Sat 22 Nov Out indefinitely Newbury is nursing a leg injury, and he is without a definitive timetable for return. Keys to the game....Will we play our fast up tempo game or will the Dons slow things down as we watch them execute the weave. If we prevail , we win by double digits . If they prevail then it is a close game. Another key is 3P shooting ...if we make them , we win. Finally, let's keep that low TO rate going. WWN2D2W.....Target slash...51/63/ 38 / 80....Keep their top 3 players to under 30 pts combined...keep TOs to 11 .....Win the Reb battle by 5... a Shake Shack burger (80 pts) means we probably win the game. Bottom line...The computer says bring home the special sauce.

Anything with computers (Team Ranking etc) is....data in ...rankings out... After the NET is completed in March...the Selection Committee will discuss 10-15 teams that are on the cusp narrowing it down to the last 4 in or out. But even when there are humans involved the humans are sitting there with their spread sheets....and not just basketball stats ....but money stats...who brings the most fans(money)..who has the largest TV audiences(money) ....what teams have interesting play or backstories that would attract fans (money) and all of these stats basketball or money are generated by the computers. Bottom lines are ....everything is computer driven with some small human intervention at the end which is also computer driven. The computers think we are the AI.

A very nice win today. Let me start by talking about a topic that I have harped on for many years.....TOs. This year hasn't been different. Coming into this game the Bills graded out at F- on TOs. But there have been some hopeful signs....15 to 20 min stretches with no TOs. Well, today was THE game. ...4. You know, many talk about efficiency...off eff...def eff...pts/poss eff...player eff.. etc. You know what the ultimate efficiency is? Cut the TOs down. Let's take a look at the game and see what happened. Bolded statements from the original post in this thread. Target slash...50/60/ 40 / 80...actual slash 58/73/38/ 73...We did good here...on FTs we were only 2 off and on 3s we were only 1 shot off...total on missed pts 5 but as you can see we did great on 2s...5 extra 2s...an extra 10 pts and a net gain of 5 pts. Going with the original spread of 19, adding 5pts makes it 24 pts...still way short of the spread. So where did the extra points come from? The computer's answer ...TOs. The computer figured in a good game we would match CM on TOs. But we didn't, we beat them on that stat. But could that stat make that much of a difference? The answer is yes. On TOs we beat them 13-4...we had 9 less TOs. That translates to 9 extra opportunities...playing that out that comes to 3 extra 2s and 2 extra 3s for the Bills...Total 12pts...but wait there is more...9 lost opportunities for CM....which would have been converted into three 2s...6pts ...12 +6= 18pts.... added to the Bills total of 24 pts(the 5 extra pts from the good shooting slash) and you come up with a a spread of 42 pts. Bottom line...high TOs bad ...low TOs good. One last thing ...4 TOs is not normal especially in a fast paced game like the Bills play. If they can stay in the 9-11 TO area ...it would be very positive for the team going forward. keep TOs to 11 ...see previous paragraph. Win the Reb battle by 7...Far exceeded...we won this one 40-26 Keep their top 3 players to under 25 pts combined...while this was a miss it still worked out....the key stat here is their top 4 players had 50 pts...not bad on the surface EXCEPT that was 77% of the total points....after those points CM was pretty much out of ammo. Get everybody a Shake Shack burger (80 pts)...yes we did...for being over 100pts they should have thrown in fries too. Btw, the last time the Bills scored over 100 3 times in the same season was 1994-95. Bottom line ...The Bills are playing like a team. They could have looked at this game and said ..we got this. But from the opening tipoff they just kept coming at CM in waves. They played 40 min of basketball...that is what good teams do.

The computer liked this game but it is unlikely to move us up from A-. This game strengthens are underlying numbers. Yes, winning games is important. And scoring margin is important too. But now that we are A- (top 50) we run into a new problem. If you want to continue to climb the rankings ladder, you will need to have teams above us lose or at least have close calls against bad teams. We have no control over other teams but if we keep winning others will lose and we will continue to climb even if it is slower. The next game against SF could help us. They are a good team at grade B. If we play like we did today, it will be another nice win.

I would put it on.

I think the computer is spooked by our frittering away big leads at the end of games. Of course we didn't do that the last game but the machine likes to see something happen twice before it declares a trend. A good sign is the computer asked me to bring it some special sauce from Shake Shack on Monday.

The at large probability is 25%.

Well, we already had a perfect storm game against Lindenwood...beat them by 43 pts with a slash of 66.7 / 75 / 52.4 / 71...This is what a perfect storm looks like. That game cancels out 1 of the 2 Acrisure tourney games that we hit 25% from the arc. Seems to me we should have at least one more 50% 3P game left in the near future.

Ahh...it's good to be back at the mainframe. Another good win in the last game at LM. I look forward to this part of the season...not because we are playing CM but because we have 8 games under our belt. It is at this point that the computer is mainly using real data as opposed to predictive algorithms. I noticed a lot of predictive systems have given the Bills a boost in their ratings after Loy....mine included. I can't speak for the others but in my case the computer has seen enough to know that we are for real. With the win over LM we are back at A-. This is significant. As I have stated in the past A- is the threshold that leads to everything...an A10 1st place finish...an A10 tourney championship....an NCAA bid. BUT this is only the 1st step...Step 2 is to stay at or above A- for the rest of the season. We have a long way to go but we have taken the first step. For those that are interested, the computer shows our chances for a NCAA bid are now at 51%...not a sure thing but a start. Btw, for those that are NET followers, I would like to point out the difference between my system and the NET is mine is more predictive. The NET on the other hand always assumes that.. tomorrow is the tourney and these are my picks/rankings. There are some pretty good divergences but by March the systems pretty much come together. One other item before we get into the nitty gritty...After the 8th game, I like to ask the computer what one stat is most important for the team to win games. This year the answer is...the 3P% stat for each game and it cranked out the following chart.... 3P%......Chance of winning the game... 25%...............50% 28%...............55% 31%................60% 34%...............65% 37%................70% 40%................75% 43%................80% 46%................85% 49%................90% Make 3s =win games Game preview... So it is back to Chaifetz ...where the arc seems closer and the basket widths seem wider. And as you can tell by the spread, it is cupcake time again. CM comes in with a D- and not particularly good at anything. They have a 7 footer (it seems like everyone does these days) who will grab some rebounds , make a block or 2 and look for put backs. But this game will be about scoring margin. If we have a good game ...make some 3s and avoid careless mistakes we can exceed the spread by 10...if we have a bad game we could be looking at 10 points below the spread. A D- is a strange grade....You are not very good but you are not a failure. Bradley, a team we handled easily in an exhibition, beat the Chippewas by over 30 pts.... and then a couple of weeks later CM played a B+ Marquette and Marq beat them by only 14. The moral is...scoring margin is everything in a game like this especially if you are trying to stay at A-. Report Card.... change from last card... Off...up....FT....Rebs.....Dn...PPG...FG%...2P%...3P% Def...up...PPG...FG%..2P%...3P%....Dn...none Looking good...We need to get 3P% up a bit and opp reb down a bit so we can make the Dean's list (straight A's) in both Off & Def. ................SLU..................CM...................SLU......................CM ...........................OFF...................................................DEF.......... PPG...........A....................D+.....................B-............................C- FG%..........A-...................B-.....................A+...13TH ITN...........C 2P%..........A....................C+.....................A+..17TH ITN.............C- 3P%..........B-...................D......................A................................C+ FT%.........A+..1st ITN......C+....................................................... Reb..........A-..16TH ITN...C+.....................B+...............................C OFF Rebs = total Bills rebs...DEF Rebs = opp total reb Top 100 In The Nation SLU... FG%...Thames ...42nd..up....Brown...90th...new 2P%....Thames..68th...new....Brown 93rd...new Stls...Thames...82nd...dn FT%...Sharma...49th...new Injuries... Neither team has reported injuries Keys to the game....We need to make 3s...and avoid careless mistakes...and we will win WWN2D2W.....Target slash...50/60/ 40 / 80....Keep their top 3 players to under 25 pts combined...keep TOs to 11 (we are currently at F-...19th WITN).....Win the Reb battle by 7...Get everybody a Shake Shack burger (80 pts) Bottom line...We need to chip away at the Chippewas.