The Bills over Campbell by 6

[The Wiz]

This game looks a little soupy to me.  Like a good soup you never know what your going to find in it.  The Bills come into this game with a C- while Campbell checks in with a D+. Let's look at the ingredients that go into the mix....

.....................SLU..................Off..................Camp............................................SLU...................Def................Camp

PPG..............F- ............................................A...................................................B+.............................................C-

FG%..............F..............................................A...............................................C+.........................................C

3P%............F- 9th worst in nation...........A+ 11th best in nation................D.............................................C

FT%.............D-........................................B-................................................................................................

Reb..............D.........................................C-..............................................B..............................................C-

Sched................SLU...B....Camp...C-

Top performers in the nation

Goodwin..........Steals.....26th

French..............Blks.......34th

Eudy..................Blks.........42nd

Clemons............PPG..........6th (23.6) unofficial...he is one game short 

Summary--They are better on offense with an easier schedule....we are better on defense with a harder schedule.  Even though they have an easier schedule ....shooting is shooting especially on the 3...even if nobody is defending, you still have to make the 3.  Moral of the story...don't leave them open....defend...defend  defend. This should be an interesting match up as one of the best shooting teams from beyond the arc goes up against one of the worst defending teams from the 3....though we have been getting better recently.  

Bottomline.....Start and finish with 8 players....Stop Clemons and Burk...Clemons is a top 100 FT shooter (87%) don't foul him ...Burk is a top 100 3pt shooter...48.1%...defend....Hold them both to 15 pts....Match or better them in Reb and TOs... 30% on 3's...we need to shoot 30% and hold them to 30%.  We should win this game but if we leave them alone...we lose....Defend.

If we stir things up ...things will turn out....M-M-M-M....Good (Win) for the Bills

 

[majerus mojo]

A 6 point expected margin vs. a school I’ve never heard of 

[Old guy]

You have never heard of the "Fighting Camels" of Campbell? The name they gave their team is worth a smile and some acknowledgement of their existence to say the least. 

[MusicCityBilliken]

6 hours ago, majerus mojo said:

A 6 point expected margin vs. a school I’ve never heard of 

Go to North Carolina, I hate to say it but they never heard of SLU. Everyone says when I say where I went to school, "oh, you went to WashU". 

[The Wiz]

8 hours ago, majerus mojo said:

A 6 point expected margin vs. a school I’ve never heard of 

But wait...it gets worse....Campbell is better than  F+ rated Detroit Mercy (2-7). Half of Detroit's D1 wins this year are against the Bills. Detroit's only other win was against D rated Houston Baptist.  On a more positive note, Detroit did lose to Va Tech by 32 points.   The Bills mystery season continues.

[slubillikens43]

If we beat Detroit, I would feel a lot better about how the season's gone with S2. And its only a 1 loss difference.

[HoosierPal]

I was some what surprised Ford stating he hasn’t placed special emphasis on FT shooting......until now. Two losses could have been flipped with team average FT shooting. 

[White Pelican]

5 hours ago, Old guy said:

You have never heard of the "Fighting Camels" of Campbell? The name they gave their team is worth a smile and some acknowledgement of their existence to say the least. 

I'm hoping this game will put us over the hump.

[QUAILMAN]

4 hours ago, tarheelbilliken said:

Go to North Carolina, I hate to say it but they never heard of SLU. Everyone says when I say where I went to school, "oh, you went to WashU". 

Don't even have to go that far... try Chicago. Nobody outside of the Catholic high schools know that SLU is a thing.

[majerus mojo]

6 hours ago, Old guy said:

You have never heard of the "Fighting Camels" of Campbell? The name they gave their team is worth a smile and some acknowledgement of their existence to say the least. 

I am out of reactions, but consider this both my acknowledgment and smile

[Old guy]

This is good, thanks majerus mojo

[The Wiz]

Bottomline.....Start and finish with 8 players....Stop Clemons and Burk...Clemons is a top 100 FT shooter (87%) don't foul him ...Burk is a top 100 3pt shooter...48.1%...defend....Hold them both to 15 pts....Match or better them in Reb and TOs... 30% on 3's...we need to shoot 30% and hold them to 30%.  We should win this game but if we leave them alone...we lose....Defend.

So let's start with the Bottom line from the original post.....

Start and finish with 8 players....pass....although we pretty much played with 6....Foreman 2 min ..Anthony 1 min  ...On the other side of the coin , we had 4 players who played 36 or more min ....Impressive.

Stop Clemons and Burk...hold them to 15.........Double fail......Don't Foul Clemons Top 100 FT shooter...100% 10-10....fail.......Burk  top 3 pt shooter @ 48.1%....44%...mini pass  ...On a good note ...one of their leading shooters  Eudy held to 18 min and 4 pts...foul trouble...he drew the short straw and had to defend French

TOs even....mini fail 13-12

Reb even ...Double pass 40-28 ...more than made up for TOs

30% on 3s....major fail on 1st half allowing Camels to hit 50%....major pass on 2nd half holding them to 25%....On offense...major pass as Bills shoot 38.5% from arc...good time to get hot from 3.

If we leave them alone we lose....1st half  ...no D on 3 or transition...fail....2nd half we defend......pass...

Overall game... we win...pass.........and make the spread...pass

A tale of 2 halves...They seemed to ignore the bottom line advice in the 1st half and take it in the 2nd half.....must have been a helluva halftime meeting.

Great game not only for the team....but for the fans to watch...sparse crowd tonight...but those that showed got their moneys worth....an entertaining game.

Let's try to build some momentum.

[HoosierPal]

Agree Wiz, we really only played 6.  Foreman 2 min, 1 TO.  Anthony 1 minute, 2 PF.  French was on the floor for 37.  The worm turned when we started guarding 25 feet out.  One of the two three's Campbell hit in the second half was when Johnson left a shooter to double the post.  He came out right after that (for his one minute on the bench). 

Thanks to Johnson and Hines (17-19), we hit 69% from the line.  How soon before Hack-A-French will be the norm?  32% from the line (10-31).

Hines did a nice job running the offense. 

[RUBillsFan]

8 hours ago, The Wiz said:

Start and finish with 8 players....pass....although we pretty much played with 6....Foreman 2 min ..Anthony 1 min

You keep saying we need to start and finish with 8 players.  However, the reality is that all 8 players don't matter.  We just need our starters to avoid foul trouble because the bench sucks.  Breaking it down further I'd say 1 player is crucial (French), 3 players really matter (Goodwin, Bess, & Johnson), 2 are useful for back court depth (Roby & Hines), and 2 are only there so that French can take a small break at some point (Anthony and Foreman).  It doesn't matter if Anthony gets hurt or fouls out playing only 4 minutes and we finish with 7 players.  We need French to avoid foul trouble and play 30+ minutes.

Probably don't want to rush a foot injury for a guy who has had multiple issues with his foot already, but Welmer can't come back soon enough.  We are desperate for another front court player with a pulse who can fill in for French when he needs a rest or gets into foul trouble.  Right now if French sits, we lose.  I know he's not the same type of player as French, but the Welmer we saw last season (hopefully the one we get this season) was head and shoulders above Foreman or Anthony.

[Cowboy]

4 minutes ago, RUBillsFan said:

You keep saying we need to start and finish with 8 players.  However, the reality is that all 8 players don't matter.  We just need our starters to avoid foul trouble because the bench sucks.  Breaking it down further I'd say 1 player is crucial (French), 3 players really matter (Goodwin, Bess, & Johnson), 2 are useful for back court depth (Roby & Hines), and 2 are only there so that French can take a small break at some point (Anthony and Foreman).  It doesn't matter if Anthony gets hurt or fouls out playing only 4 minutes and we finish with 7 players.  We need French to avoid foul trouble and play 30+ minutes.

Probably don't want to rush a foot injury for a guy who has had multiple issues with his foot already, but Welmer can't come back soon enough.  We are desperate for another front court player with a pulse who can fill in for French when he needs a rest or gets into foul trouble.  Right now if French sits, we lose.  I know he's not the same type of player as French, but the Welmer we saw last season (hopefully the one we get this season) was head and shoulders above Foreman or Anthony.

-EW going from dressing and doing pregame warmups to being in a sweatsuit is not a good progression

[RUBillsFan]

Just now, Cowboy said:

-EW going from dressing and doing pregame warmups to being in a sweatsuit is not a good progression

Agreed, especially deflating given our current depth.  I was hoping he would get some PT before conference season to knock the rust off, but that looks unlikely.

[cheeseman]

6 minutes ago, Cowboy said:

-EW going from dressing and doing pregame warmups to being in a sweatsuit is not a good progression

I was confused about that also - what is the deal?  He was suppose to be back by Jan. 1 but you have to wonder now.

[HoosierPal]

1 hour ago, RUBillsFan said:

You keep saying we need to start and finish with 8 players.  However, the reality is that all 8 players don't matter.  We just need our starters to avoid foul trouble because the bench sucks.  Breaking it down further I'd say 1 player is crucial (French), 3 players really matter (Goodwin, Bess, & Johnson), 2 are useful for back court depth (Roby & Hines), and 2 are only there so that French can take a small break at some point (Anthony and Foreman).  It doesn't matter if Anthony gets hurt or fouls out playing only 4 minutes and we finish with 7 players.  We need French to avoid foul trouble and play 30+ minutes.

Probably don't want to rush a foot injury for a guy who has had multiple issues with his foot already, but Welmer can't come back soon enough.  We are desperate for another front court player with a pulse who can fill in for French when he needs a rest or gets into foul trouble.  Right now if French sits, we lose.  I know he's not the same type of player as French, but the Welmer we saw last season (hopefully the one we get this season) was head and shoulders above Foreman or Anthony.

Welmer can give Johnson a blow also.  In the past three games Johnson has played a total of 115 of the available 120 minutes.  That is not sustainable.  Johnson is slowly developing an interior game which was weak last season.  Welmer will be rusty when he finally hits the floor. Unliike AD, Bishop and Graves, he hasn't been practicing at full speed since March.

[Zink]

10 hours ago, RUBillsFan said:

You keep saying we need to start and finish with 8 players.  However, the reality is that all 8 players don't matter.  We just need our starters to avoid foul trouble because the bench sucks.  Breaking it down further I'd say 1 player is crucial (French), 3 players really matter (Goodwin, Bess, & Johnson), 2 are useful for back court depth (Roby & Hines), and 2 are only there so that French can take a small break at some point (Anthony and Foreman).  It doesn't matter if Anthony gets hurt or fouls out playing only 4 minutes and we finish with 7 players.  We need French to avoid foul trouble and play 30+ minutes.

Probably don't want to rush a foot injury for a guy who has had multiple issues with his foot already, but Welmer can't come back soon enough.  We are desperate for another front court player with a pulse who can fill in for French when he needs a rest or gets into foul trouble.  Right now if French sits, we lose.  I know he's not the same type of player as French, but the Welmer we saw last season (hopefully the one we get this season) was head and shoulders above Foreman or Anthony.

Good post. Makes me want to expand on your thoughts a bit...

 

Anthony and Foreman haven't shown much at all thus far. I know a lot of people were optimistic about Foreman - he was a Big 10 guy coming off averages of 8ppg/6rpg after all! But if you looked deeper at his Rutgers stats, you could see that he was inefficient on the offensive end and an average defender... and this year, his FT rate AND FT %'s are way down, and his turnover and foul rates are way up. He's coming off a surgery and a year of sitting out, so it's hard to tell if this is what he is now, or if he's still shaking off the rust.

Anthony never played many minutes at Seton Hall, but was slightly above average defensively and sub-par offensively throughout his time there. He's done about the same for us, but his offensive production is down somewhat.

As RUBillsFan says, this means that we need French and Johnson to play as many minutes as they can every night. French (+3.3 BPM) has been a net positive on the year (Goodwin (+2.2) and Bess (+1.9), too), while Johnson (-0.6) is basically a neutral value player, although I think his advanced metrics will come up a bit now that he is out of his uncharacteristic three game shooting slump. A healthy Welmer will help a lot - he was our best player last year in terms of BPM (+1.0), and provides much needed floor spacing. Honestly even getting the guards who are out could help, as then Bess can help with the minutes load at the forward spots.

All stats can be found here: https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/saint-louis/2018.html

[The Wiz]

13 hours ago, RUBillsFan said:

You keep saying we need to start and finish with 8 players.  However, the reality is that all 8 players don't matter.  We just need our starters to avoid foul trouble because the bench sucks.  Breaking it down further I'd say 1 player is crucial (French), 3 players really matter (Goodwin, Bess, & Johnson), 2 are useful for back court depth (Roby & Hines), and 2 are only there so that French can take a small break at some point (Anthony and Foreman).  It doesn't matter if Anthony gets hurt or fouls out playing only 4 minutes and we finish with 7 players.  We need French to avoid foul trouble and play 30+ minutes.

Probably don't want to rush a foot injury for a guy who has had multiple issues with his foot already, but Welmer can't come back soon enough.  We are desperate for another front court player with a pulse who can fill in for French when he needs a rest or gets into foul trouble.  Right now if French sits, we lose.  I know he's not the same type of player as French, but the Welmer we saw last season (hopefully the one we get this season) was head and shoulders above Foreman or Anthony.

Eight is important because it forms a critical mass.  Many teams in college go with an 8 man rotation...so why is it a big deal for the Bills?  Because other teams have 6 more players.  Even if Foreman and Anthony don't play much  they are part of the critical mass. If you have less than 8 available regulars and you have an injury or an illness...or a couple of players with with 4 fouls....then Ford has to change his strategy....4 foul players have to play less aggressively so they don't foul out. I guarantee you that if we had 4 more players  we wouldn't be playing 4 players 36+ min.  So even with 8 we are stretched because 2 aren't playing many minutes.  Having to watch the clock and the bench  to make your team last through the game isn't a recipe   for a winning formula. I am certain all are stats from TOs to Rebs to shooting % would be better....offense and defense with more players. More players alone doesn't  make a team better. A 14 player team is not necessarily better than a 13 player team.  But a team with 10 or more has a decided advantage over a team with 6 to 8..

If we don't get help soon (more bodies) we will either wear down or suffer injuries. Time is of the essence. ......Tick...Tick...Tick