The Bills over Minn by 1

[Old guy]

2 hours ago, Reinert310 said:

I don’t subscribe to TeamRankings, but they still give us a 65% chance to win tomorrow. But you’re right, Bovada has us -2.5. I think I’d probably be willing to give the 2.5 and take the Billikens.

Reinert, I do not know how you look at games before they are played, but I can tell you that the stats for SLU are better than Minnesota's both offensively and defensively. I can tell you that Minn has won 6 games over opponents none of which were higher than the low 100s in ranking. The only game they played against a really heavy hitter (IL) they lost by 27. Regardless of how the spread goes, or how many stars of confidence TeamRankings give us, I think we will beat them and go above the spread. Call me an optimist if you wish.

[BACKHANDtheRICAN]

On 12/18/2020 at 1:26 PM, The Wiz said:

 

A nice win over NC St....This will look good on our resume.  Btw, the extra 8 pts on our spread not only helped our numbers but should help us with pollsters and post season committee reviewers.  Our 11 pt spread says this was a definitive win. If you want to see the how and why of the NC St game win,  check out the post game analysis on the NC St spread thread.

But, there is no rest for the weary,  as we face another tough test in Minn. This will be our most difficult game of the year even though this is not the best team we will face or have faced.  Minn is a B+ team.  We are an A team (currently trending at A+) . 

There are 3 reasons this will be a big challenge....#1...Road games are always hard to win in college basketball ..2...1st road game...same as #1 reason  but more so ...many visiting teams miss the spread and wind up with closer games on the first trip away....3  Minn plays better than most at home...Their home grade is an A-...Finally everything is harder in 2020 and basketball is no different. All the above factors will be exacerbated by our current environment. It is always hard to play road games ...this year more so.

So let's see what we are dealing with here....

 

.............................SLU..........................Minn........................................................SLU.....................................Minn

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

PPG.........................A.............................B+................................................................B+.....................................D+

FG%.........................A+ 14th ITN............D-...............................................................B-......................................C

3Pt%........................A+ 6th ITN.............F+.................................................................C......................................C-

FT%.........................B+.... ......................C+........................................................................................................

Reb.........................B-............................B...................................................................A+ 12th ITN......................D-

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

UP....Offense...Reb...by a lot ......Defense ...3P%...a nice jump too

Down...Defense....PPG

Top 100 ITN (In The Nation)

Assts...Collins....14th....dn

Rebs...Goodwin....12th....up.......French.....96th...new

PPG.....Perkins......64th.....up

Stls......Goodwin.....62nd....up...Collins...89th...dn

3P%...Hargrove...23rd....up....Jacobs...23rd... up.....Perkins....75th...up

Blks...French....43rd...dn

Double Double...Goodwin...3rd

Minn

PPG.......Carr....14th

Assts....Carr......40th

Blks ....Robbins....41st

Injury report....No injuries for either team

A few quirky things about Minn...Robbins their 7 footer is a tall wiry guy who is a shot blocker...not a Bates beast type player...nothing unusual here except, he is a 3 pt shooter too....Need to watch out for that.  Another quirk is their guards are great FT shooters (in the 80s) again not unusual ...but the rest of the team can't shoot from the charity stripe.  ...Also the report card doesn't seem too daunting...but looks can be deceiving.....

Let's see what we need 2 do...

WWN2D2W....Minn has 14 players...Lots of depth... right?...They have a great starting 5 (better than the report card)  ...after that things fall off rapidly. One of the keys to the game will be to wear down that starting 5 or get them into foul trouble. If we do that, we could not only win but open the game up....Stop Carr ...he is their main man....hold him to 17pts....Their other scorers are Gach, Robbins and Kalscheur...hold this trio to 27 pts....Dominate the boards ...again...They get their share of Rebs but rebounding is not their thing.  ...win the Reb war by at least 7. ...Bring the TOs down ...to 11

Bottom line....This road trip will be different then in previous years.  Being an experienced team will help but still, it is an unknown.   Playing a good team will make it an extra test. We are the better team but there is no room for error. If we make mistakes, this can slip away. Focus and win.

The Bills will just have to Go-pher this win.

Road to the Poll....2 down... 1 to go

 

Wiz- printed the report and started a warm fire with the paper. Thanks again!

[Aquinas]

Sagarin will have us by 3 and change. Basically everyone has the game within a 3 point basket.... close.

[Old guy]

14 hours ago, Reinert310 said:

I don’t subscribe to TeamRankings, but they still give us a 65% chance to win tomorrow. But you’re right, Bovada has us -2.5. I think I’d probably be willing to give the 2.5 and take the Billikens.

I do not suscribe to TeamRankings either, the information I get from them is entirely free of charge and available to anyone visiting the site. I like that very much.

[billikenbill]

Does backhandtherican have to entertain us each time with his tiresome insults to The Wiz? I'll be happy to start another board for the troll so he can entertain itself there. Just let me know and I'll send you the address.

[billikenbill]

Great news, I've just purchased a domain for backhandtherican. Go to www.tiresometroll.com and you can set fire to whatever you want there!!

[RiseOfTheBillikens]

8 hours ago, billikenbill said:

Does backhandtherican have to entertain us each time with his tiresome insults to The Wiz? I'll be happy to start another board for the troll so he can entertain itself there. Just let me know and I'll send you the address.

Bru he just joking. Everybody knows the wiz is the man. Relax

[The Wiz]

I was worried about this one....In preseason , I had this as one of our losses by about 6 pts.  But with the Bills good start we managed to not only close the gap but show a 1 pt advantage. Still....the model showed yesterday we only had a 51% chance of winning.  With that said, it still took an extraordinary circumstance of events for Minn to win this game. Let's start with the fact that at game time we were 3rd in the nation in 3Pt shooting. Yet we finished at 13% for the night...that translated into 4 more  3s we should have made (12 pts) enough to win the game. And Minn , one of the worst  3P shooting teams at 28%... shoots 40%...an extra three 3 pointers. (9pts) again, enough to win the game.  Put another way if the 2 teams have average night we win by 13 pts.  We can blame this on defense ...but to go from 44% to 13% is more than just defense.

Let's pick this apart a little more....bolded text is from the original post.

This will be our most difficult game of the year even though this is not the best team we will face or have faced....At this point, this is true.

There are 3 reasons this will be a big challenge....#1...Road games are always hard to win in college basketball ..#2...1st road game...same as #1 reason  but more so ...many visiting teams miss the spread and wind up with closer games on the first trip away....#3  Minn plays better than most at home...Their home grade is an A-...Finally everything is harder in 2020 and basketball is no different. All the above factors will be exacerbated by our current environment. It is always hard to play road games ...this year more so.....Any one who thinks loud crowds cheering for their team is what home field advantage is all about....needs to rewatch this game.

Stop Carr ...he is their main man....hold him to 17pts...Obviously this was true and it turned out to be a fail for the Bills as he wound up scoring 32pts ...any chance to make up some ground while he was out never materialized as he played 40 min.

Their other scorers are Gach, Robbins and Kalscheur...hold this trio to 27 pts.....Again this was true as these were the Gophers next 3 high scorers and another fail as they scored 32pts together.

Minn has 14 players...Lots of depth... right?...They have a great starting 5 (better than the report card)  ...after that things fall off rapidly. One of the keys to the game will be to wear down that starting 5 or get them into foul trouble..Their starters were better than the report card and none fouled out while we lost 3 of our starters. I do think Minn started to fade in the final minutes but it was too late.  Had they started to fade a few minutes earlier and we didn't lose starters,  we may have still been able to pull it off.

Dominate the boards ...again...They get their share of Rebs but rebounding is not their thing.  ...win the Reb war by at least 7. ...This worked out as we did win it by 7...but not enough to overcome the 3Pt shooting outlier by both teams.

.Bring the TOs down ...to 11....This also was a pass as we had 13....It was a pass because Minn had 20 TOs

Which brings us to the bottom line...Minn broke one of my main rules ...when a team has 20 TOs , it is usually a loss. In order to have 20 TOs and still win , something extraordinary has to happen.  And it did .  We were super bad from 3 and they were hot at the same time from the arc. All teams have hot nights and cold nights...sometimes your cold night coincides with another teams hot night. And tonight that happened. The good news is we can still be an A+ team ...we can still be ranked ...and we can still make the tourney.  Very few teams go an entire season without a loss.  ...Even National Champions...This was a good game against a good team.  If we played them again in on their court we would still have a good chance to beat them.  The main take away was this was a learning experience and as a result of this game, we will be a better team going forward.

[drkelsey55]

5 hours ago, The Wiz said:

I was worried about this one....In preseason , I had this as one of our losses by about 6 pts.  But with the Bills good start we managed to not only close the gap but show a 1 pt advantage. Still....the model showed yesterday we only had a 51% chance of winning.  With that said, it still took an extraordinary circumstance of events for Minn to win this game. Let's start with the fact that at game time we were 3rd in the nation in 3Pt shooting. Yet we finished at 13% for the night...that translated into 4 more  3s we should have made (12 pts) enough to win the game. And Minn , one of the worst  3P shooting teams at 28%... shoots 40%...an extra three 3 pointers. (9pts) again, enough to win the game.  Put another way if the 2 teams have average night we win by 13 pts.  We can blame this on defense ...but to go from 44% to 13% is more than just defense.

Let's pick this apart a little more....bolded text is from the original post.

This will be our most difficult game of the year even though this is not the best team we will face or have faced....At this point, this is true.

There are 3 reasons this will be a big challenge....#1...Road games are always hard to win in college basketball ..#2...1st road game...same as #1 reason  but more so ...many visiting teams miss the spread and wind up with closer games on the first trip away....#3  Minn plays better than most at home...Their home grade is an A-...Finally everything is harder in 2020 and basketball is no different. All the above factors will be exacerbated by our current environment. It is always hard to play road games ...this year more so.....Any one who thinks loud crowds cheering for their team is what home field advantage is all about....needs to rewatch this game.

Stop Carr ...he is their main man....hold him to 17pts...Obviously this was true and it turned out to be a fail for the Bills as he wound up scoring 32pts ...any chance to make up some ground while he was out never materialized as he played 40 min.

Their other scorers are Gach, Robbins and Kalscheur...hold this trio to 27 pts.....Again this was true as these were the Gophers next 3 high scorers and another fail as they scored 32pts together.

Minn has 14 players...Lots of depth... right?...They have a great starting 5 (better than the report card)  ...after that things fall off rapidly. One of the keys to the game will be to wear down that starting 5 or get them into foul trouble..Their starters were better than the report card and none fouled out while we lost 3 of our starters. I do think Minn started to fade in the final minutes but it was too late.  Had they started to fade a few minutes earlier and we didn't lose starters,  we may have still been able to pull it off.

Dominate the boards ...again...They get their share of Rebs but rebounding is not their thing.  ...win the Reb war by at least 7. ...This worked out as we did win it by 7...but not enough to overcome the 3Pt shooting outlier by both teams.

.Bring the TOs down ...to 11....This also was a pass as we had 13....It was a pass because Minn had 20 TOs

Which brings us to the bottom line...Minn broke one of my main rules ...when a team has 20 TOs , it is usually a loss. In order to have 20 TOs and still win , something extraordinary has to happen.  And it did .  We were super bad from 3 and they were hot at the same time from the arc. All teams have hot nights and cold nights...sometimes your cold night coincides with another teams hot night. And tonight that happened. The good news is we can still be an A+ team ...we can still be ranked ...and we can still make the tourney.  Very few teams go an entire season without a loss.  ...Even National Champions...This was a good game against a good team.  If we played them again in on their court we would still have a good chance to beat them.  The main take away was this was a learning experience and as a result of this game, we will be a better team going forward.

No mention of the amount of FT's shot and made by Minnesota??!!!

[cheeseman]

1 hour ago, drkelsey55 said:

No mention of the amount of FT's shot and made by Minnesota??!!!

The refs seemed to let them play sometimes and then other times they called it close - not sure what that was all about.  

[billiken_roy]

1 hour ago, drkelsey55 said:

No mention of the amount of FT's shot and made by Minnesota??!!!

the most glaring stat of the box score from last night is the difference in free throws.   obviously it ended up being the game imo.    give minnesota credit though.   they made em.   they were impressive at the line.    by the end of the game, you knew they were going to make every free throw.   

[3star_recruit]

Twenty-four of the Gophers' free throw attempts came after we went down 9 with 6 minutes left and started to play uber-aggressive defense to get steals.  So free throws weren't the reason we got down by that much in the first place.  Their length really bothered us.  Not only did they block and hurry shots in our halfcourt set, they even blocked two of our shots in transition.  Several of those exchanges led to fast break buckets in the other direction.  Nobody has been able to stop our transition game all season before this game. These really long teams at the 3, 4 and 5 are exactly the kind of matchup we want to avoid in the Dance.

[HoosierPal]

45 minutes ago, 3star_recruit said:

Twenty-four of the Gophers' free throw attempts came after we went down 9 with 6 minutes left and started to play uber-aggressive defense to get steals.  So free throws weren't the reason we got down by that much in the first place.  Their length really bothered us.  Not only did they block and hurry shots in our halfcourt set, they even blocked two of our shots in transition.  Several of those exchanges led to fast break buckets in the other direction.  Nobody has been able to stop our transition game all season before this game. These really long teams at the 3, 4 and 5 are exactly the kind of matchup we want to avoid in the Dance.

Hey, we don't want to hear that.  We want you to say the refs gave them the game.  Just because Minnesota is 1st in the nation in FT Attempts per Game, it has to be the refs, right.  Their 9 blocks to our 0 had nothing to do with it either.

(I agree with you 100%).

[NH]

15 minutes ago, 3star_recruit said:

Twenty-four of the Gophers' free throw attempts came after we went down 9 with 6 minutes left and started to play uber-aggressive defense to get steals.  So free throws weren't the reason we got down by that much in the first place.  Their length really bothered us.  Not only did they block and hurry shots in our halfcourt set, they even blocked two of our shots in transition.  Several of those exchanges led to fast break buckets in the other direction.  Nobody has been able to stop our transition game all season before this game. These really long teams at the 3, 4 and 5 are exactly the kind of matchup we want to avoid in the Dance.

Completely agreed. Length is our biggest kryptonite right now. That’s part of the reason we matched up so well with LSU, who is a smaller team at the 3-5 spots as far as power five teams go.

Our other issue yesterday was that we were just being too aggressive in the half-court defensively. Not only going for steals but also just over-helping. The number of open shots they got was unacceptable. The good news is that it wasn’t guys getting beat individually, so it should be something the staff can fix.

[Old guy]

I think the refs caused our loss. Carr or no Carr, the refs squelched two breakout drives and called weird fouls and travels on us, while doing the opposite with them. The technical foul was a killer. I will agree that their defense did a great job blocking our 3 pt shooting. Of course we were off in our 3 pt. shooting and in blocking, they were a strong team, but I  believe the difference was made by the refs and FT shooting.

[The Wiz]

1 hour ago, drkelsey55 said:

No mention of the amount of FT's shot and made by Minnesota??!!!

You are right ...I should have mentioned it....Late night and long report....I left it out by not finishing the stat....I just looked at the FT%....which was unusually high....Minn normal shoots 71% ...last night they shot 83%...so I figured Minn had an extra 5 FTM.....71% of 41 vs 83% of 41=5 extra FTM....significant but not a game changer..... I didn't finish the FT stat because I knew that Minn takes a lot of FTs every game....They are the #1 team in the country in FTA...so nothing out of the ordinary to be at the charity stripe frequently ....but it was unusual ...41 FTAs were a lot of shots  even for Minn. (9 over normal)

Here is the correct way to look at it....before the game as part of my forecast ...I had Minn making 23FTs...23 of 32 ....they made 34 shots as a result of a higher than normal FT% AND FTA ...therefore... an extra 11 FTM.....and a game changer. 

Was it the reason we lost...had they had a normal FT night, we win. ...but as I pointed out above it was just another anomaly that came together with others  to give Minn the win.

Bottom line ...don't do long reports after 2 am .

[BACKHANDtheRICAN]

On 12/20/2020 at 9:07 AM, billikenbill said:

Great news, I've just purchased a domain for backhandtherican. Go to www.tiresometroll.com and you can set fire to whatever you want there!!

Your name should be billikenbetty. Quit crying.

[Taj79]

I just thought a lot of mugging of Billikens was going on and uncalled while Minny players fell down and got calls.  French's fifth foul was a whistle blown before contact even happen, if it happened at all.

[billikenbill]

31 minutes ago, BACKHANDtheRICAN said:

Your name should be billikenbetty. Quit crying.

I just printed your post, tossed it in the fireplace, and it’s providing nice warmth. Thank you!!