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RI over The Bills by 6


The Wiz

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Nice win over St. J. As expected our numbers and overall grades grades stayed pretty much the same because we did what we were supposed to do... We  remain as a B team trending at B-.  Meanwhile, RI comes in at B+ ...trending at A-.  Of the 3 remaining teams on our schedule this will be the toughest.  Before we get into the game, let's take a look at the A-10 race...the battle for  4.th.

I had mentioned in my last update that last night  would be the biggest non Bills game affecting the 4th place finish....Duq vs St. B...and the good news is,  it went the Bills way...Duq beat St. B in OT in Olean....This simplifies things greatly....Assuming we win out...there are only 2 teams we need to worry about...Dav and Duq...First Dav...they play Day on Sat ...Done deal... nuf said....Next up Duq ...they need to lose 1 of their last 3 games...GM...@VCU  &  Rich...best chance for a loss ...the VCU game.    It won't be easy but there is a pathway. The most difficult game in that entire matrix will be the Bills game on Sun. 

So let's take a look at it....

..............................SLU..........................RI............................................................SLU..........................................RI

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

PPG.........................C+...........................B..............................................................B........................................C+

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

3Pt%........................C.............................D+............................................................C+......................................A+

FT%.........................F-.... WITN..............D+... .......................................................................................................

Reb.........................A..............................A--...............................................................B-.....................................D-

 OFF Rebs  = total rebs...DEF rebs = opp reb

 Bills  Off Reb...A+...15th  ITN.....down

Assts...Y Collins....42nd.....up

Rebs...Goodwin...15th....French..26th......unchanged  and down

Off Reb....French ...24th...Goodwin...33rd...down & down

Def reb......Goodwin.....33rd...French ...51st....unchanged and down

Blks.....French....20th...down

Dbl-Dbl.. Goodwin...18th and French  48th.....unchanged and down

PPG....Fatts Russell...39th

Assts...F Russell...82nd

Reb...Langevine...19th

Stls ...F Russell...3rd

Blks...Langevine...48th

Injury report

Langevine...F...2/27/20...Probable...Upper body...expected to play Sun

D Johnson...F...12/17/19...OFTS...Red shirt

Sheppard...G...11/3/19...OFTS...Eligibility

Report card note...Even though we shot pretty good from the field last game, another poor night at the FT line dropped us back to last in D1...but as we have learned this year ...it is not about % but FTM and last game we had an extra 9 FTM.

Overall RI has a poor offense ...we clearly have the advantage...on D we have a slight edge EXCEPT on 3P Def  where they are great.

WWN2D2W...Cut down on the Fatts...Hold Russell to 15 pts...Hold  Langevine 7 rebs...Rebs  and TOs will be tough but we need to win both battles.  We need to score 75 or hold them to 65...Shoot 48/35 /60...protect the ball,  Russell is 3rd ITN in steals...It will be tough to make 3s, concentrate on scoring points in the paint

Bottom line...The tendency to play to the competition is a plus for us this game...If we keep the TOs down , we can win this game. The A-10 clock is ticking ...3 to go...tick... tick... tick...

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I’m not sure beating Rhody would be considered a signature victory, but it’s the closest we’ll come to getting one this year. Despite some sloppy play against the Joeys, it looks like players are understanding their roles better and with Perkins heating up... I’ll stop there and not get my hopes up.

Get it done, Bills!!

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At this stage of the season, I would say URI is our biggest game. A W inches us closer to that magical 4th place finish if we can get some help from other teams. Of course, a W also sets the stage for the final against St. B's as the battle for the 4th place finish. An L kind of blows up everything unless we get lots of help from other teams. Never a good position to be in. 

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I don't know what will happen Sunday but win or lose,don't overlook Mason who gives us more trouble than not and who will host us mid-next week.  What team shows up for these two key road games?

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4 hours ago, billikenbill said:

I’m not sure beating Rhody would be considered a signature victory, but it’s the closest we’ll come to getting one this year. Despite some sloppy play against the Joeys, it looks like players are understanding their roles better and with Perkins heating up... I’ll stop there and not get my hopes up.

Get it done, Bills!!

If you track the report cards over the season....you will see a long , slow steady improvement on offense and defense. ...Tip o' the cap to Ford.

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47 minutes ago, Taj79 said:

I don't know what will happen Sunday but win or lose,don't overlook Mason who gives us more trouble than not and who will host us mid-next week.  What team shows up for these two key road games?

All conference road games give us trouble.  I can't recall a season outside of the Majerus years where we won more than half of our conference road games.

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7 minutes ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

Sagarin has URI by 7.62, ~8.

SLU will be a road underdog, but that’s ok.

Will the team stay on the East Coast after the URI game for Mason, or fly back to STL, then fly out to Virginia? 

Id think they would come back.  Would be back late Sunday evening.  wouldn't fly out till mid Tuesday. 

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55 minutes ago, 3star_recruit said:

All conference road games give us trouble.  I can't recall a season outside of the Majerus years where we won more than half of our conference road games.

Conference road games are a problem for 95% of college basketball teams. Only the best of the best go on the road confident of wins.

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4 hours ago, slu72 said:

At this stage of the season, I would say URI is our biggest game. A W inches us closer to that magical 4th place finish if we can get some help from other teams. Of course, a W also sets the stage for the final against St. B's as the battle for the 4th place finish. An L kind of blows up everything unless we get lots of help from other teams. Never a good position to be in. 

It's a Q-1 game. We're 1-6 in those games. URI has slipped some in the ratings. Let's say the Bills win out and @U Mass becomes a Q-2 loss. Bills are then 2-6 in Q-1 and 2-2 in Q-2. That's not great. A-10 Quarterfinals would be another Q-2 win, and a shot at Dayton would provide a huge Q-1 win. If that team lost in the finals, it would be close to the tourney.  But that scenario is less likely than SLU winning 4 games in Brooklyn.

BC, Tulane, and Kansas St., have, unfortunately, provided us almost no margin of error. Those should have been better wins. 

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1 hour ago, Crewsorlose said:

It's a Q-1 game. We're 1-6 in those games. URI has slipped some in the ratings. Let's say the Bills win out and @U Mass becomes a Q-2 loss. Bills are then 2-6 in Q-1 and 2-2 in Q-2. That's not great. A-10 Quarterfinals would be another Q-2 win, and a shot at Dayton would provide a huge Q-1 win. If that team lost in the finals, it would be close to the tourney.  But that scenario is less likely than SLU winning 4 games in Brooklyn.

BC, Tulane, and Kansas St., have, unfortunately, provided us almost no margin of error. Those should have been better wins. 

BC (preseason KemPom 118, current 173) and K State (preseason 50, current 101) have definitely disappointed.  Tulane on the other hand was expected to be terrible (preseason 289) and instead has just been bad (current 190).  Not fair to lump them in with the other 2.  Florida Gulf Coast is actually are only other non-conference opponent who has really under performed a lot (preseason 249, current 305).

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6 hours ago, 3star_recruit said:

All conference road games give us trouble.  I can't recall a season outside of the Majerus years where we won more than half of our conference road games.

You are correct...Road games are difficult because of A-10 parity.

Let's try this....Let's play all 12 teams using today's numbers...at home we finish 12-1...away we finish 6-7.

Big game tonight in Dayton against Dav....I have Day by 11...We need Day to win to continue our quest for 4th place....TV...ESPN2

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Dayton really playing tight out court defense to open the game.  Dickie v doing the color.  I guess no acc game anywhere tonight

These don't look like the same dayton and Davidson's the billikens played this. Year.  

Dayton playing like a number 1 seed, Davidson's looks like a non conference  buy game team

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17 minutes ago, billiken_roy said:

Dayton really playing tight out court defense to open the game.  Dickie v doing the color.  I guess no acc game anywhere tonight

These don't look like the same dayton and Davidson's the billikens played this. Year.  

Dayton playing like a number 1 seed, Davidson's looks like a non conference  buy game team

Bully ball gives Dayton trouble.  Davidson doesn't have a chance in hell of slowing down Toppin or anybody who can match up with Watson on the perimeter. And Chatman has been a terror on defense.

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7 minutes ago, 3star_recruit said:

Bully ball gives Dayton trouble.  Davidson doesn't have a chance in hell of slowing down Toppin or anybody who can match up with Watson on the perimeter. And Chatman has been a terror on defense.

Goes back to your statement about matchups. UD has really only been pushed in league by the Bills...while Duquesne had their way with us.

To me, Richmond is the biggest disconnect between our game and their season. We walloped them on the road, and they’re still on the bubble we’d like to be on.

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4 minutes ago, JettFlight5 said:

Goes back to your statement about matchups. UD has really only been pushed in league by the Bills...while Duquesne had their way with us.

To me, Richmond is the biggest disconnect between our game and their season. We walloped them on the road, and they’re still on the bubble we’d like to be on.

Mason and UMass were close when they played on their home court v Dayton. We’re the only team that has pushed them AT Dayton though

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I look forward to reading the Wiz statistical analysis of this one, but let's get a head start with the Bills outrebounding Rhode Island 44-26 (winning 2nd-chance points 14-5).  Bills shoot 53% from the field and 50% from 3 on 2/4 judicious shooting.  Rhode Island shot 38% from the field and 17% from 3 (3/18).  The 17 Billikens turnovers hurt, but the shooting and rebounding differentials compensated.

The Bills won despite a free-throw deficit of 7 (8/13 vs. 15/22).  This team has figured out that 3-point shooting isn't a strength and is attacking.  Points in the paint 56-30 today.

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On 2/28/2020 at 11:45 AM, HoosierPal said:

The SLU calendar says midterms begin Monday March 2, so it makes sense that they would come back for two days.

I was wrong, teams headed to Virginia tonight 

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Great game....Not only we were not favored BUT we had 17 TOs ...how could we have won?

The answer is some things went really right.

Let's look at the original post (in Bold)...

Overall RI has a poor offense ...we clearly have the advantage...on D we have a slight edge EXCEPT on 3P Def  where they are great....And this was the key...we clearly had the advantage in offense as the game proved and we had the edge on D ...and we played it smart with 3s, taking only 4 shots and making 2... and thus RI was not able to take advantage of their 3rd ITN D on 3P shots.

We need to score 75 or hold them to 65...We needed to do 1 of these things to win...we almost did them both....The key to these numbers are ...swamp them with our superior offense  or hold them with our slight edge D which turned into more than slight as we out smarted them...see above.

.It will be tough to make 3s, concentrate on scoring points in the paint...and that  we did...another key to winning the game...out scoring them in the paint by a whopping 56-30 pts....RI out smarted again...Again see above.

Shoot 48/35 /60....Let me add some numbers to this slash....RI slash....38/ 17/ 68...The significance of these numbers is...we had 1 more shot than RI and made 9 extra baskets...that extra 18-20 pts more than made up  for the 7 extra FTM by RI....btw 21 fouls  for SLU vs 12 for RI...9 extra fouls for the Bills...Hmmm...probably a topic for another thread.

protect the ball,  Russell is 3rd ITN in steals...Rebs  and TOs will be tough but we need to win both battles...At first glance this doesn't look like it worked out  but it did....Russell had an unacceptable 8 steals  and RI grabbed 17 TOs which usually means sure loss...However the TOs were canceled out by an amazing rebound total....we crushed them in rebs 44-26...which negated the excess TOs and then some.

Hold Russell to 15 pts...Hold  Langevine 7 rebs...Russell had 17 pts...close enough. and Langevine had 11 reb which didn't matter because French out rebounded Langevine 14-11 and the rest of our team out rebounded their team 30-15.

And finally....

Bottom line...The tendency to play to the competition is a plus for us this game... we can win this game.....and this is why it is a good idea to read my whole original  post rather than just the headline.

Things are looking up 4....4th.

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