The Bills over ISU by 15

[The Wiz]

A nice bounce back game against Mercer which went as expected.  A good team with little depth wears down as the game proceeds. For more info on what happened , check the Mercer spread thread.

So if you liked that last game , you may like this one too.....some similarities to the Mer game...another team with very little depth and that is top heavy.  But there are some differences. Mer was a B- team ...ISU comes in as a D+.  ISU is not a cupcake team but still below average. Let's call them a muffin.    ISU can score though ...They are B+ in PPG with 2 top scorers ...one in the top 10 another in the top 100.  So what are we missing here?  Let's look at a stat that doesn't show up in the report card.....FGA...ISU is A rated in this category...25th ITN....The Bills meanwhile are slightly ahead with an A+...15th ITN.  Here is the catch and one of the keys to the game...ISU can't shoot.....ISU FG% grades out at D while SLU comes in at A-.  But you say... they score lots of points (B+ ) The answer is ...eventually....on 2nd and 3rd attempts.  

Do you remember on the Mercer game , I forecasted that Mercer's 2 top guys would score about 50% of the pts and they came in on target.  This will be somewhat  the same  with a twist...3 of their players score 70% of the pts. This is how the game will go... Their 2 starting guards are Reeves and Freeman...They will do most of the shooting...anything they miss will be rebounded by Chatman  and then tipped or put back in.  The game plan is to score as many points as they can...that's it....The defensive plan is we will score more points than the Bills so we won't have to play defense..  Will that work?...15 pts say no.

 

Time to look at the report card.....

 

..........................SLU...............................ISU..........................SLU...........................ISU

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

PPG...................A+ 5th ITN................B+.............................B+................................F-...8th WITN

FG%..................A-...............................D..............................B+.................................C-

3Pt%................B+................................D+...........................C...................................D-

FT%.................C+........ ......................A-......................................................................

Reb.................A-.................................B...............................B+.................................F-..15th WITN

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

UP....Off...PPG,,,FG%...3P%.......Def...PPG...FG%...3P%

Down....Off....FT%....Reb

Top 100 ITN (In The Nation)/ gm

Assts...Collins...3rd...up

Stls......Collins....19th....up

Rebs....Okoro....56th....down

Blks...Okoro......76th

FG%....Linssen....100th

Double-Double....Hargrove...17th....up

ISU

PPG......Reeves....9th......Chatman.....69th

Reb.....Chatman...26th

Blks....Chatman...36th

 

WWN2D2W....Same thing as last time...wear them down and build a lead as the game goes on.  Contain their big 3...Reeves, Freeman and Chatman...hold them to 44 pts. ...Let's shoot like we did last time....target slash 50/ 40/ 75....Out rebound them....they will only be rebounding on their end looking for 2nd chance shots...take those away....Don't leave them open...those guards can make shots if left alone...play D like last time.

What can go wrong?...If we play their game of offense only and/or we go cold shooting.

Bottom line....If The Bills play their hand right, then the ISU Cards will be the low hand.

Ir las cuentas  (Go Bills)

[Old guy]

Nice post, poor Spanish, Wiz.

[The Wiz]

6 hours ago, Old guy said:

Nice post, poor Spanish, Wiz.

How about.... Go Billikenos

[Old guy]

Much better

[RUBillsFan]

Looks like Illinois State gets to the FT line quite a bit.  Per KenPom, so far this season they score 28.6% of their points on FTs which is 11th in the nation.  They also shoot very well from the line 76.9%, 55th in the nation.  Chatman has been very adept at drawing fouls 7.3/40 minutes, 38th in the nation.  Linssen and Okoro need to avoid foul trouble.

On the flip side, they put the other team on the line a lot.  21.9% of their points allowed are from the FT line which is 65th in the nation.  Teams have shot well against them from the line 77.3% which is 37th from last in FT % allowed.  Obviously FT % allowed has a lot to do with FT skill of the opposing team, but perhaps ISU isn't great at recognizing who to foul & who not to foul.

Bad part of SLU is that the 3 main offensive weapons (Reeves, Freeman, Chatman) all avoid fouls very well.  It's the rest of the team that is foul prone.

Another interesting thing on KenPom is that ISU is only 35.5% of their FGs are assisted which is 20th from last in the nation.  Aside from Murray State, their 4 games have been against pretty poor defenses, so that's pretty surprising.  Freeman is the only guy who seems to be a passing threat (29.7 assist rate, everyone else below 10).  I'd force Freeman to give up the ball & force one of their other players to make a pass. 

[Taj79]

Who has Illinois State played?  Home against NC-Wilmington (267), at Eastern Michigan (264), and Murray State (107) and Bucknell (298) at home.  Those are current KenPom ratings.  All I'm saying or asking is are their stats somewhat inflated?  It woudl be akin to us playing Harris-Stowe every night.  

My concern is that the Cancun Challenge is played in the Hard Rock resort's ball room.  Shooting could be a challenge.  

[wgstl]

3 minutes ago, Taj79 said:

Who has Illinois State played?  Home against NC-Wilmington (267), at Eastern Michigan (264), and Murray State (107) and Bucknell (298) at home.  Those are current KenPom ratings.  All I'm saying or asking is are their stats somewhat inflated?  It woudl be akin to us playing Harris-Stowe every night.  

My concern is that the Cancun Challenge is played in the Hard Rock resort's ball room.  Shooting could be a challenge.  

Not showing up bc of playing somewhere unique or different is the only thing keeping this from a blowout, knock on wood

[RUBillsFan]

37 minutes ago, Taj79 said:

Who has Illinois State played?  Home against NC-Wilmington (267), at Eastern Michigan (264), and Murray State (107) and Bucknell (298) at home.  Those are current KenPom ratings.  All I'm saying or asking is are their stats somewhat inflated?  It woudl be akin to us playing Harris-Stowe every night.  

My concern is that the Cancun Challenge is played in the Hard Rock resort's ball room.  Shooting could be a challenge.  

Illinois State is projected to be way worse than SLU and all of their opponents (DI programs) are way better than Harris Stowe (NAIA).  Agreed that their stats at this point in the season are inflated by weaker competition, but they aren't entirely meaningless.  You can see trends - who are their go to scorers, how do they typically score, how do they typically play defense, etc.  Then you can apply those trends to what we've seen from SLU and make guesses about how the game will go & things to key in on.

[jonny karate]

Asking without looking. Is this game on espn+

[RUBillsFan]

20 minutes ago, jonny karate said:

Asking without looking. Is this game on espn+

Nope.  It's on CBS Sports Network.

[The Wiz]

2 hours ago, RUBillsFan said:

Looks like Illinois State gets to the FT line quite a bit.  Per KenPom, so far this season they score 28.6% of their points on FTs which is 11th in the nation.  They also shoot very well from the line 76.9%, 55th in the nation.  Chatman has been very adept at drawing fouls 7.3/40 minutes, 38th in the nation.  Linssen and Okoro need to avoid foul trouble.

On the flip side, they put the other team on the line a lot.  21.9% of their points allowed are from the FT line which is 65th in the nation.  Teams have shot well against them from the line 77.3% which is 37th from last in FT % allowed.  Obviously FT % allowed has a lot to do with FT skill of the opposing team, but perhaps ISU isn't great at recognizing who to foul & who not to foul.

Bad part of SLU is that the 3 main offensive weapons (Reeves, Freeman, Chatman) all avoid fouls very well.  It's the rest of the team that is foul prone.

Another interesting thing on KenPom is that ISU is only 35.5% of their FGs are assisted which is 20th from last in the nation.  Aside from Murray State, their 4 games have been against pretty poor defenses, so that's pretty surprising.  Freeman is the only guy who seems to be a passing threat (29.7 assist rate, everyone else below 10).  I'd force Freeman to give up the ball & force one of their other players to make a pass. 

Nice post.

In order to address your point, let's look at the last game with Mercer....a terrible shooting FT team....Yet against us, instead of shooting low to mid 60% area, they shot 80%.  Yet that extraordinary performance yielded them 2 extra pts over what was expected and made no difference. FT shooting will only make a difference in a close game.

In ISU's case, they take a lot of FT /gm...29.  When you play poor teams you get fouled more. The poor teams can't defend the dominant team so they tend to foul more. I have already baked in 76.9% FT in the model. We won't give up 29 FTA,  but for this example let's say we do....let's also say that ISU does the impossible and shoots 100%.  We give up an extra 7 pts and we still win easily.

Imagine that FT shooting is a knife....and that FG% and 3P% are guns.  To quote Indiana Jones....Never bring a knife to a gun fight.

If we lose this game, it won't be because of FT shooting...it will be because we didn't bring ammo for the guns.

Here is hoping that The Bills bring out the big guns.

[JackRussel]

On 11/22/2021 at 9:34 PM, The Wiz said:

Nice post.

In order to address your point, let's look at the last game with Mercer....a terrible shooting FT team....Yet against us, instead of shooting low to mid 60% area, they shot 80%.  Yet that extraordinary performance yielded them 2 extra pts over what was expected and made no difference. FT shooting will only make a difference in a close game.

In ISU's case, they take a lot of FT /gm...29.  When you play poor teams you get fouled more. The poor teams can't defend the dominant team so they tend to foul more. I have already baked in 76.9% FT in the model. We won't give up 29 FTA,  but for this example let's say we do....let's also say that ISU does the impossible and shoots 100%.  We give up an extra 7 pts and we still win easily.

Imagine that FT shooting is a knife....and that FG% and 3P% are guns.  To quote Indiana Jones....Never bring a knife to a gun fight.

If we lose this game, it won't be because of FT shooting...it will be because we didn't bring ammo for the guns.

Here is hoping that The Bills bring out the big guns in BP!

Weapon ammunition tends to run out Maybe players just get tired and can't perform at their best? Physical training usually helps to improve this feature.

[Bay Area Billiken]

The CBS Sports line has dropped a point from SLU -12 to SLU -11. The o has dropped from 144.5 to 142.5. 

[brianstl]

Sagarin agrees with the Wiz.  SLU by 15.

[Cowboy II]

-scores and odds has us -11, opened at 11.5 and o/u 143, opened at 144

-buffalo -4.5 down from -6

[The Wiz]

I checked the Bills injury report for any last minute additions...didn't see any.  Of course the report wouldn't list ice cubes or low hanging chandeliers.  Could just be some nervous gamblers who are looking at our board and reading the wrong posters.

In any case, I am staying with 15.   ISU  is not as good as Mercer.

[Taj79]

Concerned about a basketball game in a hotel ballroom.

[The Wiz]

12 minutes ago, Taj79 said:

Concerned about a basketball game in a hotel ballroom.

We are good enough to beat them in a hotel bathroom. 

[Bay Area Billiken]

46 minutes ago, Taj79 said:

Concerned about a basketball game in a hotel ballroom.

Low ceiling.  Playing in a ballroom does concern me.

[Bay Area Billiken]

3 hours ago, The Wiz said:

I checked the Bills injury report for any last minute additions...didn't see any.  Of course the report wouldn't list ice cubes or low hanging chandeliers.  Could just be some nervous gamblers who are looking at our board and reading the wrong posters.

In any case, I am staying with 15.   ISU  is not as good as Mercer.

Sagarin also has SLU by 15, rounded off from 14.67.

[Bay Area Billiken]

That lower line could be SLU doesn't yet have the cache.

I'd rather SLU be playing in Las Vegas, in a tournament, not a single game that starts at 12 noon Pacific (Drake on 12/22/21), and not now near Cancun.  That upcoming SLU vs. Drake game is in a 4,600 seat rodeo arena, south of the Airport, well south of the real Strip, which is north of the Airport.

We were just in Las Vegas, and college basketball fans were in abundance.

[The Wiz]

This was a good win....Why? Because mostly things went as they were supposed to go. For those who have followed the spread threads this year you notice that I have put the forecasted spread at 50 / 40 / 80...I had lowered the FT shooting for this game because our FT shooting had cooled recently. And sure enough,  we came in at 50/40/80 ...exactly. This slash line is the holy grail for the Bills....We do that every game and we will win most of them. You will also remember from the original post in this thread of the importance of holding their top 3 guys to 44 pts...they came in at 46 pts combined ..another good hit.  We were supposed to dominate in rebs...we did 33-21.. And even the forecast of them fading came to pass. With a little over 7 min left,  the game was tied at 60 .  In the next 2 min we opened up an 11 pt lead.  At that pt we decided to run out the clock....giving up 5 pts for the win instead of adding 5 pts to the spread.

However, it wasn't just letting the clock run down that cost us the spread ...they were a couple of things that were off that lead to the spread miss. Let's take one last look at the slash....

50/ 40/ 80....SLU

48/ 38/ 73...ISU.

They almost matched our slash...slightly below us in every box.  What does that mean? It means 1 extra 2PtM...same number of 3s made...and 4 extra FTs...total 6 pts...the difference in the game. They were not supposed to shoot as well as us but they did ...too many open shots and easy ones....Defense was a tossup...we contained their big 3 but gave away a few baskets. The irony is the one area they were supposed to beat us ( FTs) is the one we beat them by the most.

But none of this really explains the missed spread.  Here is what happened....The computer forecasted 11 TOs...we had 16...way too many.... Those 5 extra TOs cost us 10 pts..... with the winning margin of  6pts that totals 16 pts ...Bingo ...we make the spread. One of the things that saved us was ISU also had 16 TOs which was forecast.

Bottom  line ...As I said above, there was a lot to like in this game...How many remember the free lemonade when the Bills scored 80 pts....Lemon-eighty. Funny they didn't do that this year...they must have known.  This was another growth game. What did we learn?  That even if you have a good game, you can screw it up with too many TOs.  Our TO numbers have been pretty good this year...so we will file this under a little careless and an easy fix.

Next up is SFA...Where a win would be a Super Fine Accomplishment. 

[cheeseman]

13 hours ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

Low ceiling.  Playing in a ballroom does concern me.

Yes we know that one of the things IL State is known for is Ballroom dancing.  

[The Wiz]

2 hours ago, cheeseman said:

Yes we know that one of the things IL State is known for is Ballroom dancing.  

Let's not Dance around the issues