The Wiz Posted December 3, 2021 Share Posted December 3, 2021 What a great game against BSU. The Bills grind out a win in a tough venue against a good team. In the preseason , I had the game as a question mark. That means I had it as even. A come from behind win and no fold at the end ... a sign that the team is maturing. If you need more, check out my post game analysis in the spread thread. This brings us to game 8 (of D1 games). This is an important game. ..For the Bills, it is a quality opponent. For me, the 8th game represents the point in the season where the sample size is large enough to be able to say ...Yes , we are for real...the data shows we are really an A- team and are on track for a Dance bid. But first we have to win. UAB is another tough challenge.. The bad news is they are better than Boise. The good news is we are still the better team. But there are a few potholes along the way. The report card looks pretty good especially on the offensive side. ... Our first Offensive honor roll in a few years....straight A's. Let's see what the report card looks like for this game. ..........................SLU...........................UAB..........................SLU...........................UAB .......................................OFF..................................................................DEF............. PPG..................A+ 6th ITN...................A-............................C+.................................B FG%.................A-..................................B..............................C+...............................C+ 3Pt%...............A-..................................C-.............................C+.................................F FT%.................A-........ .........................C............................................. Reb.................A-...................................C...............................A..................................C OFF Rebs = total rebs...DEF Rebs = opp reb UP....Off...PPG....3P%...FT%.......Def....3P%...Reb Down....Off...none...Def....PPG...FG% Team FTs... Top 100 Teams ITN FTM....The Bills...1st FTA....The Bills....1st FTM / 100 possessions...The Bills...1st FTA / Offensive play...The Bills...2nd Top 100 ITN (In The Nation)/ gm SLU Assts...Collins...7th...down Stls......Collins....37th....down UAB Reb...Jemison...79th FG%...Jemison...63rd Stls...Jackson...10th...Ertel...37th...Walker...82nd Assts...Walker 52nd FT%...Ertel...1st(22 way tie)..100%...13 straight You will notice I have added a new section to the report card. Something I rarely do but then again this is a rare event. Enjoy. Wash St which had been the FT leader had a bad night at the charity stripe so we are now king of the FTs. WWN2D2W 48 / 39 / 77...do it....Out rebound them ...This was an issue in the last game with BSU ...we are clearly the better offensive team. But if we let them out rebound us , they get 2nd and 3rd chances and we lose our offensive edge. Out rebound them by 4+ ...Two keys to the game...Key 1...3P shooting...We need to beat them here....we are one of the better 3P shooting teams ...they are one of the worst defending the 3...we need that 38% from the arc....Key 2...Protect the ball...They are 3rd ITN in opp TOs....20.3/ gm...if we give up 20 TOs we lose...part of this equation is steals ...they have 3 guys in the top 100 in steals... 11.7/gm...Our TO target is 11...we will be in good shape if we can keep to 11 TOs. Bottom line....If we can protect the ball and make a few 3s we can show that we are for real.....Bring the buckets and put out the Blazers. Westy03, CBFan, BuiltFordBills and 2 others like this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old guy Posted December 3, 2021 Share Posted December 3, 2021 Happy to read this report. The Vegas line is interesting for both teams playing Saturday. UAB has stayed much closer to the Vegas line, than SLU has in the games both teams have already played this season. That means that SLU is much more likely than UAB to go farther up over the Vegas line than UAB is. We continue being underestimated by the betting public and are quite capable of beating opponents that are supposed to beat us up by the estimates of the odds makers. I am very glad to hear that we are currently the top team in FT points made per game. Certainly this is a great help towards winning games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taj79 Posted December 3, 2021 Share Posted December 3, 2021 Always appreciate the Wiz reports. Question: if your model is predicated and confirmed by the first 8 D1 games, and all you play are cupcakes, aren't the numbers kind of skewed then? For example, what if you played eight Eastern Illinois equivalents instead of eight Memphis equivalents? Maybe this has been answered before but I'm toolazy to go back and check. almaman likes this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Wiz Posted December 3, 2021 Author Share Posted December 3, 2021 43 minutes ago, Taj79 said: Always appreciate the Wiz reports. Question: if your model is predicated and confirmed by the first 8 D1 games, and all you play are cupcakes, aren't the numbers kind of skewed then? For example, what if you played eight Eastern Illinois equivalents instead of eight Memphis equivalents? Maybe this has been answered before but I'm toolazy to go back and check. Good question. The simple answer is might be skewed a little but the model does take into account the SOS and it is able to make a determination even on an all cupcake schedule of 8 games. The deeper answer is it is similar to the parlor game 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon ...a concept that is based on the theory that any 2 people on Earth are 6 or fewer acquaintance links apart. In the case of D1 teams , you are only talking about 357 other teams vs 7 billion people on Earth in the 6 degree game so the links are much tighter. On the board , you always see posters who say they want to see all our opponents win the rest of their games. This does help us but the reality is all games affect us because of the linking and even on a night when none of our opponents play our number are affected. Basically, though, the closer the link, the more affect. Eight is a minimum sample size. Ideally, as the season goes on, I become more accurate. I would rather have 20 games than 8 but 8 is the minimum to be able to make good calls from real data. Before 8 games, I use a Bayesian predictive model which I think has been pretty good over the years. As we move through the 8 games , I mix in real data. Hope that answers your question. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bay Area Billiken Posted December 4, 2021 Share Posted December 4, 2021 CBS Sports has SLU -2, o145. ESPN.com concurs, SLU -2.0, Odds courtesy of Caesars Sportsbook. Sagarin has SLU by 4.66, rounded off to 5, 4 points of which are Sagarin's factoring of SLU's home court advantage. Irrespective and as always, Nobody beats The Wiz! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old guy Posted December 4, 2021 Share Posted December 4, 2021 OK, Team rankings has published its pre game report. SLU (58) predicted as winner with 1 star of confidence (means it can go either way), and the Vegas line is 2.6 pts in favor of SLU. I assume we are favored because the game is at the Chaifetz. This is the way I look at it, by analysis of the Vegas line in the games already played this season by both teams, it appears that the street/Vegas under estimates SLU but has a fairly good estimate of UAB (40). My estimate based upon this analysis of the Vegas line in prior games for both teams is that SLU will likely be the winner and that we will win above the Vegas line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Holly Hills Posted December 4, 2021 Share Posted December 4, 2021 Hang some Xmas lights in the morning. Take kids to Xmas on the quad. Watch team blue dominate UAB. Cap it off with the soccer team punching a ticket to the college cup. Nice little Saturday… Old guy likes this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnkielBreakers Posted December 4, 2021 Share Posted December 4, 2021 nm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old guy Posted December 4, 2021 Share Posted December 4, 2021 16 minutes ago, Dr. Holly Hills said: Hang some Xmas lights in the morning. Take kids to Xmas on the quad. Watch team blue dominate UAB. Cap it off with the soccer team punching a ticket to the college cup. Nice little Saturday… Agree with you, it will be quite a Saturday, hope all works as we think it will. The kids will love it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old guy Posted December 4, 2021 Share Posted December 4, 2021 At this time the Vegas line for this game has decreased to 1.5 pts in favor of St. Louis. From my point of view this is a reflection of how under estimated SLU is by the betting public. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Wiz Posted December 5, 2021 Author Share Posted December 5, 2021 Tough loss. We did pretty much what we needed to do to win...Pretty much but not all. From the original post in this thread ...WWN2D2W Our TO target is 11....We made 11...check 48 / 39 / 77.....49/42/ 73 ...we were off by 1 FT....check we are one of the better 3P shooting teams ...they are one of the worst defending the 3...we need that 38% from the arc ....That should have read 39% from the projected slash...no matter... we made 42%...check Looks pretty good so far..so what went wrong? Out rebound them ...This was an issue in the last game with BSU ...we are clearly the better offensive team. But if we let them out rebound us , they get 2nd and 3rd chances and we lose our offensive edge. Out rebound them by 4+...And this was it...a fail that cost us the game...They out rebounded us and like I said in this phrase ...we lost our offensive advantage. We shot a 49% FG %...They shot 48.4% FG% ...They made 7 extra shots on 15 extra FGA...many of those were on 2nd chance shots as a result of snagging extra rebounds. Bottom line....We were leading the with 6:07 left in the game. 2 1/2 mins later we were down 9. We played winning basketball for 37 1/2 mins. The problem was it was a 40 min game. I stand by my original statement... we are the better team...but we gave them a 2nd chance (rebound) to win. CBFan likes this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old guy Posted December 5, 2021 Share Posted December 5, 2021 I think their defense neutralized Jimerson and that contributed heavily to their win. On the other hand we did not control Ertel (scoring) or Jemison (rebounds) effectively. I also think the Technical against Thatch and the foul the called on Yuri at the end of the game killed us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WVBilliken Posted December 5, 2021 Share Posted December 5, 2021 2 hours ago, Old guy said: I think their defense neutralized Jimerson and that contributed heavily to their win. On the other hand we did not control Ertel (scoring) or Jemison (rebounds) effectively. I also think the Technical against Thatch and the foul the called on Yuri at the end of the game killed us. And the 2 missed FT's by Okoro in the last couple of minutes really hurt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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