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The Bills and VCU even


The Wiz

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 Well, that game against Day was painful....time to move on...there is still work to be done.

The good news is we are still an A- team ...which means we are still in the running for a bid (Last 5 in).  The bad news is we have little room for error.  ...The math has simplified.  First, let's clear one thing up.  It is mathematically impossible for us to win the A-10.   But we do have a chance to finish in the top 4 ....double bye....win 2 games....wait a week and then play for the A10 Championship game in Dayton.  If we win...auto bid.  However, even if we lose that game in Day, we would still have a 57% chance to be selected to Dance.  But in order to do all of that,  we need to sweep the final 3 games....which is doable...especially if we win the first game which will be our toughest of the 3....which brings us to the VCU game....

As I mentioned above , we are an A- team , currently trending at B...VCU comes into this game as a B+ team trending at A-....What does this mean? It means,  we are the better team overall but VCU has been playing better lately.  A couple of important observations on VCU...They are 2nd ITN in steals.  Unsurprisingly, they are 6th ITN in opponent TOs. We will need to protect the ball to win.

Before we look at the report card let me point out an anomaly on the card....something that has never happened before....It is a mirror card...that is,  the offense and defense have the same grades throughout. It is a positive sign  when the report card is good...which it still is. It shows we are a balanced team...right now perfectly balanced.

Let's take a look and see what we are dealing with.

 

.............................SLU.................................VCU.......................................................SLU......................................VCU

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

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

FG%.........................A-.....................................B-........................................................A-.........................................A-

3Pt%........................C+...................................C..........................................................C+........................................A+....18th ITN

FT%.........................C....... ..............................A.......................................................................................................

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

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

UP....Offense...Reb ..........Defense .......none

Down...Offense...FG%....3P%.......Defense.......Reb...FG%

Top 100 ITN (In The Nation)

Assts...Collins...11th ...dn

Rebs...Goodwin....14th....dn

FT%...Perkins...61st...up

Stls......Goodwin...54th....dn

Double Double....Goodwin...6th ....up

VCU

PPG.......Hyland...38th

Assts......Baldwin ...90th

Stls.........Baldwin......22nd

Blks.......Ward........24th

Injuries

The Bills...none to report

VCU

1/30/21....Medley-Bacon...C...Undisclosed...Out indefinitely...Officials have refused to provide a return date at this time

12/3/20....McAllister.......G.....Knee...Out for the season

Unofficial ...2/20/21.....Hyland (leading score)...G...Sprained foot...still being evaluated...watch this thread for an update

 

The report card shows we have the better offense...with the exception of FT shooting and that the defenses are about equal ...with VCU strong on 3P and The Bills on Reb.  As you can see on the injury report, Hyland is a question mark....If he doesn't play ...the spread will tilt toward SLU.  Usually I don't mention injuries in the commentary because other players pickup the slack, or the spread is wide enough to not make a difference.  In this case, VCU leans on him pretty heavily. He is not just the leading scorer but outscores the next guy by nearly double.  We will see what happens in the coming days.

I expect this game to be a tight defensive low scoring battle...70 pts might be enough to win.

WWN2D2W.... We need to protect the ball......the good news is while they are great at forcing TOs, the Rams turn the ball over a lot.  So the important thing  would be to  win the TO battle. We need to beat them on the boards. Defending the 3 is their strong suit, so shot selection will be important. Last but not least we need to make some shots....48/37/73.

Bottom line ...This will be a close defensive struggle. The Bills need to shake off Dayton and move on... VCU will be on us like flies on honey....We need to play heads up ball...This game will set the tone for the rest of the season....Focus and win.

 

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1 hour ago, The Wiz said:

 Well, that game against Day was painful....time to move on...there is still work to be done.

The good news is we are still an A- team ...which means we are still in the running for a bid (Last 5 in).  The bad news is we have little room for error.  ...The math has simplified.  First, let's clear one thing up.  It is mathematically impossible for us to win the A-10.   But we do have a chance to finish in the top 4 ....double bye....win 2 games....wait a week and then play for the A10 Championship game in Dayton.  If we win...auto bid.  However, even if we lose that game in Day, we would still have a 57% chance to be selected to Dance.  But in order to do all of that,  we need to sweep the final 3 games....which is doable...especially if we win the first game which will be our toughest of the 3....which brings us to the VCU game....

As I mentioned above , we are an A- team , currently trending at B...VCU comes into this game as a B+ team trending at A-....What does this mean? It means,  we are the better team overall but VCU has been playing better lately.  A couple of important observations on VCU...They are 2nd ITN in steals.  Unsurprisingly, they are 6th ITN in opponent TOs. We will need to protect the ball to win.

Before we look at the report card let me point out an anomaly on the card....something that has never happened before....It is a mirror card...that is,  the offense and defense have the same grades throughout. It is a positive sign  when the report card is good...which it still is. It shows we are a balanced team...right now perfectly balanced.

Let's take a look and see what we are dealing with.

 

.............................SLU.................................VCU.......................................................SLU......................................VCU

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

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

FG%.........................A-.....................................B-........................................................A-.........................................A-

3Pt%........................C+...................................C..........................................................C+........................................A+....18th ITN

FT%.........................C....... ..............................A.......................................................................................................

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

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

UP....Offense...Reb ..........Defense .......none

Down...Offense...FG%....3P%.......Defense.......Reb...FG%

Top 100 ITN (In The Nation)

Assts...Collins...11th ...dn

Rebs...Goodwin....14th....dn

FT%...Perkins...61st...up

Stls......Goodwin...54th....dn

Double Double....Goodwin...6th ....up

VCU

PPG.......Hyland...38th

Assts......Baldwin ...90th

Stls.........Baldwin......22nd

Blks.......Ward........24th

Injuries

The Bills...none to report

VCU

1/30/21....Medley-Bacon...C...Undisclosed...Out indefinitely...Officials have refused to provide a return date at this time

12/3/20....McAllister.......G.....Knee...Out for the season

Unofficial ...2/20/21.....Hyland (leading score)...G...Sprained foot...still being evaluated...watch this thread for an update

 

The report card shows we have the better offense...with the exception of FT shooting and that the defenses are about equal ...with VCU strong on 3P and The Bills on Reb.  As you can see on the injury report, Hyland is a question mark....If he doesn't play ...the spread will tilt toward SLU.  Usually I don't mention injuries in the commentary because other players pickup the slack, or the spread is wide enough to not make a difference.  In this case, VCU leans on him pretty heavily. He is not just the leading scorer but outscores the next guy by nearly double.  We will see what happens in the coming days.

I expect this game to be a tight defensive low scoring battle...70 pts might be enough to win.

WWN2D2W.... We need to protect the ball......the good news is while they are great at forcing TOs, the Rams turn the ball over a lot.  So the important thing  would be to  win the TO battle. We need to beat them on the boards. Defending the 3 is their strong suit, so shot selection will be important. Last but not least we need to make some shots....48/37/73.

Bottom line ...This will be a close defensive struggle. The Bills need to shake off Dayton and move on... VCU will be on us like flies on honey....We need to play heads up ball...This game will set the tone for the rest of the season....Focus and win.

 

I would like to see our grades pre covid and after covid...the eye test says we are not an A- team post covid ..

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18 minutes ago, billikenblue said:

I would like to see our grades pre covid and after covid...the eye test says we are not an A- team post covid ..

You have your choice...You can read The Wiz's Preconference Forecast 1/24/ 21...which is a past , present and future of the season....or....if you need more info you can read...The Wiz's Preconference Forecast 12/27/20 which also shows the outlook for all the teams.  The dates are in the title of the threads.

On Dec 24, we were A overall  trending at A.......today we are A-  trending at B+.

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Since there has been no official announcement...he is classified as questionable...and the model assumed he will play half his average time...which in this case is 16 min. If he sits out the model will tilt in favor of The Bills.

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Well, no Bones makes for an interesting issue for VCU .....

I have seen eight VCU games this year.  In every one of them, VCU has shown a propensity for getting the ball to Bones when in a shot-clock challenged situation.  Bones is the MAN.  There have been instances where a team stopped that option (Bonaventure in Olean, Penn State) and VCU became totally helpless on the offensive end.  Vince Williams is certainly their #2 scorer and his three-point shot has been improving, but he also can float around lost for some minutes of games (he threw a whole bunch away in the recent Richmond game).  Corey Douglas is averaging about 4 and is not an offensive juggernaut.  Hasan Ward (6 ppg) is better but much more raw.  Levi Stockard is Levi Stockard; not much has changed from Manhattan, Kansas but he might be motivated considering this is his hometown team.  Jhamir Watkins has been exciting, but inconsistent.  Ace Baldwin's career high (sure, he's a freshman) is 12 and he has been in the 10 to 12 range recently.  And he's much better and more proven than Brickus of La Salle and what did he just do to us?  The rest of the bench is pretty unproven at this point.  

Hyland has been the Rams leading scorer for 17 of VCU's 21 games including the last 11 or so in a row.  Three of the others show Williams as the lead with Stockard being the lone outlier in the loss at Penn State.  Bones average almost 20 ppg; here's hoping VCU can't find enough firepower to replace that.  

VCU does not play the HAVOC of old but does want to speed you up, force turnovers in the flow of the game, and use those turnovers for easy fast break buckets that amplify their overall shooting percentages.  Turning this into a half court game might actually be to our advantage.

With Bones out, we could and should win.  But we need the pre-COVID team out there.  Not whatever that was at Dayton last week.  

 

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This is what I posted on our board in the thread about our strategy during Bones's absence:

I'd start Ace, Jamir, Vince, Levi, Corey. Try to run a balanced offense, and value the ball more than any other game all season. I'd love scoring from all 5 starters, with Ace dishing out assists and drawing some fouls. Run a lot of pick and pop with Levi, helping to draw French out, then make them pay with backdoor cuts with some assists by Levi. Try to draw fouls from French, and foul him when he has the ball. Run a few set plays for Vince and Jamir to get them some open 3s. Bring Key/Josh Banks/Hason in as the "6th man".

Ballhandling can be by committee, with Ace, Jamir, Vince, and Josh Banks getting a share of bringing the ball up. Josh played PG in AAU, and if he gets some meaningful minutes, he may surprise, as long as he lets the game come to him.

Bring Ward off the bench, let him have a field day with Linnsen and whatever guards who decide to drive inside. Give MBJ more than 15 minutes off the bench, and he'll do good things.

KEEP SOMEONE, ANYONE, ON GOODWIN. HECK, PUT ME IN, COACH! Now, more than ever, we can't afford to allow him to get a bunch of rebounds, and therefore give SLU a bunch of second chance opportunities. Those will kill us.

Throw a handful of defensive looks at them. Man, 2-3/matchup zone, press, etc. Quickly switch to some zone if a couple of guards get in foul trouble. Force them to shoot a bunch of jumpers, especially anyone not named Perkins, and GET THOSE REBOUNDS!

After our tough winning streak, we understandably played mentally tired and not into it against GMU, and our rebounding was absolutely terrible. Frankly, I don't care if we win or lose tomorrow, I just want to see how we respond without Bones, and hope to have him healthy for the A10/NCAA tourney. 

 

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I have one question in my mind regarding the Bills and Covid. Did the team get vaccinated PRIOR to the Dayton game? The way I understand it, vaccination can produce all kinds of effects for a few days. If this was the case, since the effects are short lived, we can feel a bit more reassured that they will play better against VCU than they did against Dayton.

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10 minutes ago, Old guy said:

I have one question in my mind regarding the Bills and Covid. Did the team get vaccinated PRIOR to the Dayton game? The way I understand it, vaccination can produce all kinds of effects for a few days. If this was the case, since the effects are short lived, we can feel a bit more reassured that they will play better against VCU than they did against Dayton.

I doubt the team is allowed to get it since they had covid  just 45 days ago 

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With the way the A-10 is going.  This is probably viewed as a win and in game for at-large purposes.  

This is one of the bigger games for Travis Ford in my opinion.  If we lose here then we are 3-4 in conference and I think the saying is, you are what you're record is.  

Just a monster game tonight.

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4 minutes ago, SLU_Nick said:

With the way the A-10 is going.  This is probably viewed as a win and in game for at-large purposes.  

This is one of the bigger games for Travis Ford in my opinion.  If we lose here then we are 3-4 in conference and I think the saying is, you are what you're record is.  

Just a monster game tonight.

Am I falling for recency bias when I say this is the biggest regular season game in the Travis Ford era? Lose this game and I don't see a reasonable path to an at-large bid. I guess theoretically you could beat Richmond and UMass and then get a favorable draw in the A10 tourney against some teams with good NET ratings and then lose in the A10 final to another good NET A10 team but even that would probably require some outside help with bubble teams.

Hell even a win tonight + the scenario above doesn't make us an absolute lock for an at-large bid. With Bones out today, you just absolutely have to win. There is no way we play as poorly as we did against Dayton and I think we break out of a long team-wide shooting slump (29/105 from 3 in the past 4 games - 27.6%). It's a little scary to me that Jimerson has shot the ball very poorly but he is shooting 29% from 3 in the past 4 games and the rest of the team is shooting even worse (26.9%). Eventually the shots are going to fall. 

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9 hours ago, lquarles said:

This is what I posted on our board in the thread about our strategy during Bones's absence:

I'd start Ace, Jamir, Vince, Levi, Corey. Try to run a balanced offense, and value the ball more than any other game all season. I'd love scoring from all 5 starters, with Ace dishing out assists and drawing some fouls. Run a lot of pick and pop with Levi, helping to draw French out, then make them pay with backdoor cuts with some assists by Levi. Try to draw fouls from French, and foul him when he has the ball. Run a few set plays for Vince and Jamir to get them some open 3s. Bring Key/Josh Banks/Hason in as the "6th man".

Ballhandling can be by committee, with Ace, Jamir, Vince, and Josh Banks getting a share of bringing the ball up. Josh played PG in AAU, and if he gets some meaningful minutes, he may surprise, as long as he lets the game come to him.

Bring Ward off the bench, let him have a field day with Linnsen and whatever guards who decide to drive inside. Give MBJ more than 15 minutes off the bench, and he'll do good things.

KEEP SOMEONE, ANYONE, ON GOODWIN. HECK, PUT ME IN, COACH! Now, more than ever, we can't afford to allow him to get a bunch of rebounds, and therefore give SLU a bunch of second chance opportunities. Those will kill us.

Throw a handful of defensive looks at them. Man, 2-3/matchup zone, press, etc. Quickly switch to some zone if a couple of guards get in foul trouble. Force them to shoot a bunch of jumpers, especially anyone not named Perkins, and GET THOSE REBOUNDS!

After our tough winning streak, we understandably played mentally tired and not into it against GMU, and our rebounding was absolutely terrible. Frankly, I don't care if we win or lose tomorrow, I just want to see how we respond without Bones, and hope to have him healthy for the A10/NCAA tourney. 

 

I am your biggest critic but I will admit this is a good post because I learned something from you about VCU.

Since the Dayton game I have no idea which SLU team is going to show up but win or lose I will cheer my team on to the end.

You never know what your going to get with a college basketball game.  VCU loses to GM, Dayton loses to Fordham and SLU gets the mother of all beat downs from Dayton.

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