Bills and Wisc even

[Quality Is Job 1]

Well the good news was we did what we needed to do on 3pt D. I was looking for 15 or less 3pt Att...Wisc had 12....also needed to hold them to 33% or less....Wisc had 33% ...so far so good .

The bad news is we had an abysmal night on offense. We normally shoot 47.3% from the field. If we make our average we win by 12. If we have an off night and shoot 37% , we are even. Instead we shoot less than a third (21-65...32.8%) and the game slips away. This happens to the best of teams.

In any case this was a good learning experience.,...playing an A+ team and hanging close. This game will pay dividends down the road at tournament time and also as soon as next week when we face another A team in Wich St.

If this is our worst loss of the year (6 pts to an A+ team) then we are in good shape.

Time to put this aside and focus on ODU.

Go Bills

It sure didn't feel like a 6-point loss to me. I know the Bills hit some "totals-padding" 3s, but after they slipped back down by double-digits after whiffing on the opportunity to make it a one-possesion game, those points were basically meaningless. Now all of a sudden guys who hadn't done particularly well all game end up with 15 and 14 points.

I think we might have won the game if our people had done better shooting free throws. Just simple free throws with no one defending or blocking, just the free throws we missed might have made the difference and won the game.

That logic doesn't hold, because Wisconsin shot FTs worse than the Bills on more attempts. If Wisc. hits 70% (21 of 30), the margin would have been 10 points. If we then add 3 FTMs to Jett -- the rest of the team hit FTs at a reasonable rate -- the margin winds up being 7, still larger than the actual margin. Besides, the Bills didn't shoot and miss enough free throws in the first half, when the outcome was still in the balance, to have affected the flow of the game had they shot better.

[BACKHANDtheRICAN]

Sorry I am a little late to the party but I was on the road.

Well the good news is the Bills have been upgraded to A+.....So it will be the A+ Bills vs the A+ Badgers. This will be like a Sweet Sixteen game. It will be a back and forth affair. Good chance for OT. As I stated in some earlier posts , this will be our toughest opponent of the regular season. That could change if one of the future teams we play gets hot but for now it looks like this will be THE game. It will be a defining game for a few reasons. The obvious is that Wisc is an A+ ranked team ...beating them would put the Bills on the map both with publicity and ranking. It also would be a resume win too....a win that the Selection committee would take note of. Finally, this game (win or lose) will give us ( the fans, the media and the team) a good sense of where we stand. A win will give the team a little extra swagger. Even a close loss will not be too damaging.

So how can we win? Let's get to the nitty gritty. As many of you know by now, one of my fav stats is 3pt D. And in this area the Bills have been trending very well. Through the first 5 games our numbers defending the 3 look like this.....starting with SEMO....24%, 21%, 20%, 18%, 12%. Pretty impressive.

But here is the problem...Wisc is one of the best shooting 3 pt teams in the country....checking in at a scary 45.7%. So what we have here is ....the unstoppable force (Wisc) against the immovable object (The Bills) In order to win the Bills need to hold the Bsdger 3 pt attempts to 15 (still a lot) or less and keep the made shots to 5. These numbers wouldn't be bad for an average team but for a hot shooting team like Wisc. they will be disruptive enough to give us the win. If we have a great night and hold them to 13% (2 made) we could open up the spread to 9 or 10. If we let them play their game then it will be ....oh well.

Also, the disorentation factor ...strange place (playing at the Hard Rock Hotel) plus strange land seem to affect 3 pt teams a little more (not to mention the ice)

Bottomline...Will our D win out over their 3....

.....................My guess is yes...

.....................and if true....

.................... it'll be a win for SLU

The Wiz loses again.