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The Bills over Ford by 9


The Wiz

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Well , let's see if we can make it  2 in a row on the spread. This game will be a little more difficult to forecast the exact spread. The actual spread is 7-12 pts in the Bills favor with 9 being the most likely.  5 pts  is a big variable.  This is being caused by the Bills trending up and Ford trending down.(a good thing)  This game reminds me of the RI game ..a game we won 60-53...I would expect a similar score ...maybe 62-53. This game is similar because like RI...Fordham has a weak offense..and a strong defense. They are pretty good at protecting the ball until somebody starts to bother them. Then they can give it up.  And while they are weak on offense they are a decent 3P shooting team. In addition they are strong on defending from 3.  In summary , they are good at the perimeter (both sides),,,,,weak on both sides near the basket....coupled with weak rebounding....there are some things we can take advantage of.

Let's look at the report card.....

..............................SLU.............................Ford.............................................SLU.................................Ford

..................................................OFF......................................................................................DEF...............

PPG.........................F+.................................D-...............................................A+..18th ITN...................A

FG%..........................D-................................D...................................................B+...................................B-

3P%..........................F+................................C+.................................................B+.................................A

FT%...........................F-...2nd worst ITN......D .........................................................

Reb............................A-...............................D-..................................................B-...................................C+

 

Top 100 ITN

STLS....Goodwin 27th

Not much change in the Off grades....we slipped a couple of spots in FT shooting....not much lower to go from here...On D we are up in PPG and Reb and down in 3P ...still a strong looking D...Goodwin improved 1 spot on steals.

Injury update.....Nothing new on the Bills.....Fordham.. 1/ 11/19 Reserve guard Chris Austin ...8.9 mpg ...injured thumb ...out for season.

Forcing TOs....Bills are in the top 60  for the season....34th ITN in last 3 games.

WWN2D2W....Stop Honor....he is their scorer...hold him to 12 pts....everyone else to single digits.  Win the TO & Reb battles.  Especially , the rebound battle....they are a weak  rebounding team, we need to take advantage of this. Put away the short shots and fast breaks....there will be less opportunity from the arc.

What Can Go Wrong...To be known in the future as WCGW....They can get hot from the 3pt land....Also, we don't make our slash ....It is a pretty low bar BUT it is good enough to win with our top D....42/31/58.9...I put the decimal in the FT stat because it is the only thing between us and the black hole.

Bottom line....This is ours to win...There will be no easy conference games...parity...Should be a big day for French ...he is a good match for this team....Take Care of Business (TCOB) and we win.

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28 minutes ago, slu72 said:

If it has it likely didn't make it past the first round. 

In the last 20 seasons the worst team has not made the tournament.  A bunch of the bottom 20 have made the tournament and advance. Some of those teams:

Three seasons ago Middle Tennessee was the the 4th worst and upset Michigan St in the first round. In 07-08 Memphis was the eighth worst ft shooting team and made it to the national championship game. UConn won the National Championship in 04 as the 15th worst. SIU’s Sweet 16 team in 02 was the 14th worst. In 00 UCLA made the Sweet 16 as the 3rd worst.

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1 hour ago, BillsBeliever!!! said:

So we are second worst ITN in free throws. How close are we to the worst? Has the worst free throw shooting team ever made the NCAAT?

Manhattan is the worst....they have us by 3%....we are safe for now.....good answer by Brian above....I know last year NM St was the worst  at 64%...Davidson was the best at about 80%....numbers don't very much on FTs from year to year....the best usually is around 80% and the worst is around 64%....It would take a herculean effort for the Bills to get to 64% this year by tournament time....As I noted above , if we can stay around 60% and the rest of the slash holds up we will be OK. It just means we have no room for error. 

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10 hours ago, Clocktoweraccords2004 said:

Fordham is where we break the mold I hope. We need to improve before george Mason and Davidson before we can get the title 

We don't need a trap game right now, if ever, but, like catching a cold, they happen. This game kind of sets up as a trap game. Emotional win at LaSalle. A lightly respected opponent. Four days away from home cooking and sleeping in your own bed. Miserable weather conditions that keep you from doing some light sight seeing to pass the time in the Big Apple. Anticipation of a possible big home match up against Davidson. Yeah, I sound like a worry wart, but it's in my SLU DNA.

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15 minutes ago, slu72 said:

We don't need a trap game right now, if ever, but, like catching a cold, they happen. This game kind of sets up as a trap game. Emotional win at LaSalle. A lightly respected opponent. Four days away from home cooking and sleeping in your own bed. Miserable weather conditions that keep you from doing some light sight seeing to pass the time in the Big Apple. Anticipation of a possible big home match up against Davidson. Yeah, I sound like a worry wart, but it's in my SLU DNA.

You lost me with emotional win at lasalle

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3 hours ago, slu72 said:

We don't need a trap game right now, if ever, but, like catching a cold, they happen. This game kind of sets up as a trap game. Emotional win at LaSalle. A lightly respected opponent. Four days away from home cooking and sleeping in your own bed. Miserable weather conditions that keep you from doing some light sight seeing to pass the time in the Big Apple. Anticipation of a possible big home match up against Davidson. Yeah, I sound like a worry wart, but it's in my SLU DNA.

I’ve had a bad feeling about 3 games this year. Pitt, SIUC, and Florida State. I don’t have that same feeling about Fordham. 

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On 1/13/2019 at 3:57 PM, The Wiz said:

Well , let's see if we can make it  2 in a row on the spread. This game will be a little more difficult to forecast the exact spread. The actual spread is 7-12 pts in the Bills favor with 9 being the most likely.  5 pts  is a big variable.  This is being caused by the Bills trending up and Ford trending down.(a good thing)  This game reminds me of the RI game ..a game we won 60-53...I would expect a similar score ...maybe 62-53. This game is similar because like RI...Fordham has a weak offense..and a strong defense. They are pretty good at protecting the ball until somebody starts to bother them. Then they can give it up.  And while they are weak on offense they are a decent 3P shooting team. In addition they are strong on defending from 3.  In summary , they are good at the perimeter (both sides),,,,,weak on both sides near the basket....coupled with weak rebounding....there are some things we can take advantage of.

Forcing TOs....Bills are in the top 60  for the season....34th ITN in last 3 games.

WWN2D2W....Stop Honor....he is their scorer...hold him to 12 pts....everyone else to single digits.  Win the TO & Reb battles.  Especially , the rebound battle....they are a weak  rebounding team, we need to take advantage of this. Put away the short shots and fast breaks....there will be less opportunity from the arc.

What Can Go Wrong...To be known in the future as WCGW....They can get hot from the 3pt land....Also, we don't make our slash ....It is a pretty low bar BUT it is good enough to win with our top D....42/31/58.9...I put the decimal in the FT stat because it is the only thing between us and the black hole.

Bottom line....This is ours to win...There will be no easy conference games...parity...Should be a big day for French ...he is a good match for this team....Take Care of Business (TCOB) and we win.

In addition to everything you're saying above, Fordham is just WAY less athletic and talented than SLU. Period. We're bigger, stronger, faster - we should be taking it right at them aggressively on offense and the reason I bolded those lines above is that this game seems like a great opportunity to really turn up the pressure defensively. I'm not saying we should press for 40 minutes, but I'd like to see a more aggressive trap/press look from us at times. We can get their smaller, slower, weaker guards to cough it up.

I know the shooting woes keep us too close in every game but I'm looking at Fordham's 9-7 record against one of the weakest schedules I've ever seen and I'm looking at their roster and I see no reason why this should be a single-digit win. If anything, this should be a blowout, a confidence booster, and a game that forges our identity more. Go right at them, defend, rebound, harass, don't settle for three-pointers. We should be bullies tonight.

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i agree pistol.   i have been saying all year this billiken team should be moving towards playing a havoc style defensively and use our guard advantage.   especially now that we are in conference and the games mean more and we have the athletic advantage.   lets rattle our opponents.

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29 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

i agree pistol.   i have been saying all year this billiken team should be moving towards playing a havoc style defensively and use our guard advantage.   especially now that we are in conference and the games mean more and we have the athletic advantage.   lets rattle our opponents.

I definitely see where you are coming from, but the defense is so good right now that I would hesitate to switch it up defensively. If we could push it more on offense i think that would help immensely (and if we figured out how to finish on the break)

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Agree w/ both sides re Defense. Why mess w/something that's not broken, i.e. Bess on a team's primary scorer. But if a press is called for, i.e. we're behind in the late stage of a game, then use it. 

And looking ahead who's not excited about Bess on Grady? 

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29 minutes ago, slu72 said:

Agree w/ both sides re Defense. Why mess w/something that's not broken, i.e. Bess on a team's primary scorer. But if a press is called for, i.e. we're behind in the late stage of a game, then use it. 

I get the point about the defense not being broken, but the offense is.  And using the press and trapping would be used to generate transition buckets because we are having a little trouble getting them the traditional way.  I don't think we need to use it in order to get stops.  We can do that the way we have been doing it all season.

I don't want to switch to some gimmick defense a la Shaka Smart, but I would like to strategically employ that press defense in order kick start some scoring.  We often go looooong stretches of the game without buckets.  When Coach feels that scoring dearth coming on, we could throw the press on, pull it back when it seems appropriate (we pick up some fouls, the opponent starts breaking it, etc.).

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49 minutes ago, RiseAndGrind said:

I definitely see where you are coming from, but the defense is so good right now that I would hesitate to switch it up defensively. If we could push it more on offense i think that would help immensely (and if we figured out how to finish on the break)

successfully fast breaking more times than not comes from defensive pressure from the guards.      

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1 minute ago, Matty Light said:

I get the point about the defense not being broken, but the offense is.  And using the press and trapping would be used to generate transition buckets because we are having a little trouble getting them the traditional way.  I don't think we need to use it in order to get stops.  We can do that the way we have been doing it all season.

I don't want to switch to some gimmick defense a la Shaka Smart, but I would like to strategically employ that press defense in order kick start some scoring.  We often go looooong stretches of the game without buckets.  When Coach feels that scoring dearth coming on, we could throw the press on, pull it back when it seems appropriate (we pick up some fouls, the opponent starts breaking it, etc.).

havoc was pretty darn successful for VCU and paved the way for Shaka to land at texas.   

there is a difference imo from havoc to an actual press.   a press has rules what shaka did was exert the vcu athleticism to dominate teams.   the guards would hustle and fly around and create turnovers.  maybe there is a merger of the two philosophies that would increase our pressure and be successful.  

i dont disagree that our defense isnt broken.   but i do believe by utilizing our athletic talent we might be able to create more easy baskets which even with just a few would increase our ppg and shooting percentages.   of course it might also come with the risk of fatigue and foul trouble.   so definitely something to approach with caution.   but imo we have the depth that would fit this style with thatch and jacobs being there to spell our other guards with a faster game.

 

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8 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

havoc was pretty darn successful for VCU and paved the way for Shaka to land at texas.   

there is a difference imo from havoc to an actual press.   a press has rules what shaka did was exert the vcu athleticism to dominate teams.   the guards would hustle and fly around and create turnovers.  maybe there is a merger of the two philosophies that would increase our pressure and be successful.  

i dont disagree that our defense isnt broken.   but i do believe by utilizing our athletic talent we might be able to create more easy baskets which even with just a few would increase our ppg and shooting percentages.   of course it might also come with the risk of fatigue and foul trouble.   so definitely something to approach with caution.   but imo we have the depth that would fit this style with thatch and jacobs being there to spell our other guards with a faster game.

 

+1 I've been saying this for a while. I view it as a way to try to generate some offense, when things are getting stagnant in the half-court.

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2 hours ago, Pistol said:

In addition to everything you're saying above, Fordham is just WAY less athletic and talented than SLU. Period. We're bigger, stronger, faster - we should be taking it right at them aggressively on offense and the reason I bolded those lines above is that this game seems like a great opportunity to really turn up the pressure defensively. I'm not saying we should press for 40 minutes, but I'd like to see a more aggressive trap/press look from us at times. We can get their smaller, slower, weaker guards to cough it up.

I know the shooting woes keep us too close in every game but I'm looking at Fordham's 9-7 record against one of the weakest schedules I've ever seen and I'm looking at their roster and I see no reason why this should be a single-digit win. If anything, this should be a blowout, a confidence booster, and a game that forges our identity more. Go right at them, defend, rebound, harass, don't settle for three-pointers. We should be bullies tonight.

Well, there are the facts that Fordham is at home and the Billikens tend to have lengthy scoring droughts.

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5 minutes ago, Quality Is Job 1 said:

Well, there are the facts that Fordham is at home and the Billikens tend to have lengthy scoring droughts.

Per Sagarin, SLU is a 7 point road favorite, which includes a 4 point home (Rose Hill Gym) court advantage for Fordham.

Per cbssports.com, SLU is a 7.5 point road favorite.  Over/Under is 121.

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4 hours ago, billiken_roy said:

i agree pistol.   i have been saying all year this billiken team should be moving towards playing a havoc style defensively and use our guard advantage.   especially now that we are in conference and the games mean more and we have the athletic advantage.   lets rattle our opponents.

Agree

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2 hours ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

Per Sagarin, SLU is a 7 point road favorite, which includes a 4 point home (Rose Hill Gym) court advantage for Fordham.

Per cbssports.com, SLU is a 7.5 point road favorite.  Over/Under is 121.

I have Fordham at 3.09 pt. home field advantage....which is about average for home court. By contrast SLU checks in above average at 4.17/gm. for the Fetz.  We are also trending up since "the addition by subtraction".

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