UMass over The Bills by 3

[Soderball]

We don't match up well with physical teams like UMass. They're like VCU in that regard. UMass by 8. Easy win. Frank Martin and the Minutemen are going to pressure inside, Ezewiro will get exhausted, and we will collapse and give.up turnovers & easy layups.

 

We need to play HORSE and UMass is going to make us play basketball.

[Lord Elrond]

UMass beats the spread, 11 pts over the Billikens

[Soderball]

9 hours ago, Soderball said:

We don't match up well with physical teams like UMass. They're like VCU in that regard. UMass by 8. Easy win. Frank Martin and the Minutemen are going to pressure inside, Ezewiro will get exhausted, and we will collapse and give.up turnovers & easy layups.

 

We need to play HORSE and UMass is going to make us play basketball.

Called it

[The Wiz]

In the general outlook in my original post in this thread , I went into detail about the importance of matching them in TOs.  We didn't and we lost.  When we don't match the other team in TOs, we have an 82% chance of losing.  The computer thought we would  lose the TO battle by 1 or 2 TOs....equivalent to 2-5pts.  We actual had 5 extra TOs worth 11 pts, the exact margin of the game.

In the upcoming Loyola game spread thread, I will go into greater detail about how the TO spread works but for now the only number you need to remember is 82%....the chance for a loss when we TO over the ball more than the opponent.

[Soderball]

11 minutes ago, The Wiz said:

In the general outlook in my original post in this thread , I went into detail about the importance of matching them in TOs.  We didn't and we lost.  When we don't match the other team in TOs, we have an 82% chance of losing.  The computer thought we would  lose the TO battle by 1 or 2 TOs....equivalent to 2-5pts.  We actual had 5 extra TOs worth 11 pts, the exact margin of the game.

In the upcoming Loyola game spread thread, I will go into greater detail about how the TO spread works but for now the only number you need to remember is 82%....the chance for a loss when we TO over the ball more than the opponent.

We don't really turn the ball over that much, Wiz. Our opponents have had under 10 TOs since November nearly i believe. We had the first game in what was it 15 years? of all division 1 games in which a team had ZERO turnovers. that's a 1 in 300k chance or something.

 

This team has the worst PG play i have ever seen in a SLU uniform. We are BAD. We are breaking the computer because of how bad we are. The computer is going to revolt and overthrow us if you keep subjecting it to Billiken basketball.

[The Wiz]

7 minutes ago, Soderball said:

We don't really turn the ball over that much, Wiz. Our opponents have had under 10 TOs since November nearly i believe. We had the first game in what was it 15 years? of all division 1 games in which a team had ZERO turnovers. that's a 1 in 300k chance or something.

 

This team has the worst PG play i have ever seen in a SLU uniform. We are BAD. We are breaking the computer because of how bad we are. The computer is going to revolt and overthrow us if you keep subjecting it to Billiken basketball.

I mentioned in the opening post in this thread that we aren't bad in TOs (C+)...but we are horrific  (F- 16th worst ITN) in opponent TOs.  It is the extremely low total (again 16th worst  ITN) that is causing the TO spreads / differences that are putting us in an impossible situation to win. When we lose the TO spread  the computer estimates our only chance to win is to shoot 54%+ from the arc.  That won't happen very often.

[Soderball]

11 hours ago, The Wiz said:

I mentioned in the opening post in this thread that we aren't bad in TOs (C+)...but we are horrific  (F- 16th worst ITN) in opponent TOs.  It is the extremely low total (again 16th worst  ITN) that is causing the TO spreads / differences that are putting us in an impossible situation to win. When we lose the TO spread  the computer estimates our only chance to win is to shoot 54%+ from the arc.  That won't happen very often.

That's why I've talked about 3pt% as the only relevant stat for us.

Our PG play is not going to generate turnovers. Cian Medley is a d2/NAIA guy. Meadows is a horizon league guy.

We have to shoot unreal percents from 3pt land and slow the game down a lot more and prevent attempts.

[Taj79]

@Soderball:  curious as to your suggestion on just how to slow the game down.  We already run the weave, get the ball back to the top of the key, then scramble to launch a shot near the end of the shot clock.  That's our offense,   I guess then you mean doing something with this gawd-awful defense we throw out there?

[Soderball]

11 hours ago, Taj79 said:

@Soderball:  curious as to your suggestion on just how to slow the game down.  We already run the weave, get the ball back to the top of the key, then scramble to launch a shot near the end of the shot clock.  That's our offense,   I guess then you mean doing something with this gawd-awful defense we throw out there?

Run the shot clock more; stop "pressing" on defense the few times we do it.

The Billikens are not game winners and cannot play to win games, giving ourselves the best chance involves limiting possessions and hucking up three's and hoping we outshoot the opponent.

[Taj79]

@Soderball:  okay.  Thanks for the answer.  However, we already tend to run the shot clock down and then because we have no one sans Parker who can create his own shot, we are chucking whatever shot we have left.  I haven't seen us press on defense short of one guy putting minimal pressure on the advancing point guard.  Our press against VCU led to back-to-back layups indicating to me that we don't know how to press.  Also, our point guards are so weak, they get pushed out to near half court to start our gawd-awful weave so this in and of itself should play pretty well into you "run the shot clock more" philosophy.