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Conference Title Race


For-DaLove

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How can you all focus on Billiken basketball while the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is currently offering insight into what Adam Wainright eats before every game?

Let me guess, to deserve such coverage it must be something extraordinary and available only to the elite sports players... Pheasant tongues braised in truffle oil and covered with beluga caviar and heirloom tomatoes. Am I close?

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Per Timmerman (prior to GW-VCU game, though I don't think that changes the math):

SLU's magic number to win the league title is six, though it applies to multiple teams at this point. SLU's magic number for a bye into the A-10 quarterfinals is five.

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Let me guess, to deserve such coverage it must be something extraordinary and available only to the elite sports players... Pheasant tongues braised in truffle oil and covered with beluga caviar and heirloom tomatoes. Am I close?

You're very close. Peanut butter and strawberry jelly.

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Are we really hyperventilating over a game at GM now? If that's really the biggest cause for alarm, I'd say we're in pretty good shape.

If we lose to VCU and UMASS its bad but its not that bad. VCU has an RPI of 22 and UMASS has a 20. If we lose to GM, they have an RPI of 143. It will be classified as a bad loss by the selection committee. Also, we don't really have that big time win over a ranked team this year.

BTW, on Christmas day GM had a nice win over St Mary's.

I do think the team plays to the level of the competition, as we seen in both the OOC games and conf games. The big games we seem to get up for. So I think will be prepared for them.

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I just don't think the possibility of losing at GM is great enough to worry about. There is always the chance of a team like us last year losing to RI or UMass this year losing to GM. Even a loss to Duquesne at home is POSSIBLE. (Insert obligatory paragraph about never taking anybody "lightly" here). But I feel pretty confident GM is not going to hang with us again this year after already doing it once at Chaifetz.

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As far as I can see, GM was making just too many fouls under the basket in their way to block the opponents and get the rebounds. In our game with them the officials could have called a significant number of additional fouls for activity like this. Also check the stats, one of the reasons we beat them was the number of free throws we made, these do not happen without prior fouls. SLU connected 23 out of 25 FT, GM had only 7 FT, connected 6 of them. This is a very wide difference in FTs. They need to control their fouls and still win, which is apparently what they are doing now. And that, if you wish to carry this argument forward, will make it easier for SLU to score against them and for them it will make it more difficult to get the high levels of offensive rebounds.

I know this is circular logic, but it has some factual basis to it. If you look at the recent game between GM and UMass, GM has markedly improved in this regard. In this game Umass shot 30 FT, made 19 of them, while GM had 29 FT and made 22. In this particular game both GM and UMass had plenty of fouls and GM outscore UMass in FT throwing. The total number of rebounds was the same for both teams and the other stats were close to one another. UMass lost because they had lower scoring percentages in all categories but particularly in 3 point shooting (they made 28% of all 3 pointers 7-25, vs GM's 63.8% of all 3 pointers 7-13).

GM will not be insurmountable for us when we play them next.

Old Guy, I'm going totally by the eye test on the game against GM. It seemed like to me every shot they missed, they got the board and a new clock. Even at the end, they got two looks to win it. Yeah, they may have mugged us, but despite all the the FT's we got and made, a game we should have won going away at home went into OT. I'll say it again, GM's getting scary. But let's not worry about them right now, we got bigger fish to fry; like a Sha®ka.

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