The Bills over LoyMar by 5

[The Wiz]

 First of all congrats to the Soccer team on their win over Bryant...Overcoming all the odds..an away game...refs...NCAA.  A great win for a great team.

Second, I am still on the road but after this game, I will be back to full pregame reports.  

And finally, this is an important game for the Bills.  This battle against Loyola will show what the Bills are made of.  Can they come out strong against Loy after the heartbreaking  loss to  Stfd or will they stumble out of the starting gate? This game will complete the first cycle (8 games) where the spreads and the data become more meaningful. The computer thinks we will come out strong. This is a different/ better team than last year. A stronger team with more depth ...a team in a better place to overcome adversity.  The game against Stfd was a freak game...not just because we lost in the final seconds but because the loss was a low probability event...a once in a blue moon occurrence.(for more info on this see the post game analysis in the Stfd spread thread.). By shaking this past game off and focusing on LM, we can still make this a very promising season.

)Game preview.... The loss had a minor effect on our numbers. We have dropped back to B+ (from A-)  Normally a game like LM wouldn't be able to move the needle back up much. but in this case a win over a decent team on the road (and beating the spread) might be just enough to get us over the hump and back to A-. Some of this upward movement is dependent on other teams but as long as we take care of business we will be fine.  LM comes into the game as a B- team.  This will not be an easy task. On offense, even with weakness the past 2 games we still have all A's except on 3 P shooting which has slipped back to B. One area that has not weakened is FT shooting...we are now # 1 ITN in FT%. Meanwhile, LM is no slouch on Off with all B's with 2 exceptions...LM is A+.. 9th ITN in Rebs and  D- on FT shooting,  This game could be decided at the charity stripe. The Bills are also looking good on D too....FG% - 12th ITN.....2P%- 11th ITN. The rest of the grades were Bs...For the Lions Def there were A's and B's with the exception of  Rebs  D-...So LM gets a lot of Rebs and they give up a lot of Rebs.  The Lions have a strong starting 5 that can shoot 3s.  It should be a close game with advantage Bills.

Injury...

Bills...No injuries

LM...Vide...Foot injury...Out for the game...injured Nov 24

Keys to the game...FT shooting...rebs...3P shooting...TOs ...Depth...Vide is a big loss for LM...2nd leading scorer...what little Depth they had is gone

WWN2D2W....Target slash...53/55/40/ 80...make some 3s...match them on rebs...TOs 11...Depth...they have a strong starting 5 but then there is a sharp drop off.  We need to take advantage of this with our strong starting 9. We need to play up tempo and when they start subbing we need to open up the spread

Bottom line...I think we should beat Loy Mar...I don't want to be Lion about that.

[Bay Area Billiken]

6 minutes ago, The Wiz said:

 First of all congrats to the Soccer team on their win over Bryant...Overcoming all the odds..an away game...refs...NCAA.  A great win for a great team.

Second, I am still on the road but after this game, I will be back to full pregame reports.  

And finally, this is an important game for the Bills.  This battle against Loyola will show what the Bills are made of.  Can they come out strong against Loy after the heartbreaking  loss to  Stfd or will they stumble out of the starting gate? This game will complete the first cycle (8 games) where the spreads and the data become more meaningful. The computer thinks we will come out strong. This is a different/ better team than last year. A stronger team with more depth ...a team in a better place to overcome adversity.  The game against Stfd was a freak game...not just because we lost in the final seconds but because the loss was a low probability event...a once in a blue moon occurrence.(for more info on this see the post game analysis in the Stfd spread thread.). By shaking this past game off and focusing on LM, we can still make this a very promising season.

)Game preview.... The loss had a minor effect on our numbers. We have dropped back to B+ (from A-)  Normally a game like LM wouldn't be able to move the needle back up much. but in this case a win over a decent team on the road (and beating the spread) might be just enough to get us over the hump and back to A-. Some of this upward movement is dependent on other teams but as long as we take care of business we will be fine.  LM comes into the game as a B- team.  This will not be an easy task. On offense, even with weakness the past 2 games we still have all A's except on 3 P shooting which has slipped back to B. One area that has not weakened is FT shooting...we are now # 1 ITN in FT%. Meanwhile, LM is no slouch on Off with all B's with 2 exceptions...LM is A+.. 9th ITN in Rebs and  D- on FT shooting,  This game could be decided at the charity stripe. The Bills are also looking good on D too....FG% - 12th ITN.....2P%- 11th ITN. The rest of the grades were Bs...For the Lions Def there were A's and B's with the exception of  Rebs  D-...So LM gets a lot of Rebs and they give up a lot of Rebs.  The Lions have a strong starting 5 that can shoot 3s.  It should be a close game with advantage Bills.

Injury...

Bills...No injuries

LM...Vide...Foot injury...Out for the game...injured Nov 24

Keys to the game...FT shooting...rebs...3P shooting...TOs ...Depth...Vide is a big loss for LM...2nd leading scorer...what little Depth they had is gone

WWN2D2W....Target slash...53/55/40/ 80...make some 3s...match them on rebs...TOs 11...Depth...they have a strong starting 5 but then there is a sharp drop off.  We need to take advantage of this with our strong starting 9. We need to play up tempo and when they start subbing we need to open up the spread

Bottom line...I think we should beat Loy Mar...I don't want to be Lion about that.

Adman and I will be there, returning to the scene of the '11 come from ahead defeat.  I expect a tough game on LMU's home court, but a game SLU should win. Hopefully, the team will come out firing after the gut wrenching, last second loss to Stanford on a near miracle that went Stanford's way. 

[CenHudDude]

8 hours ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

Adman and I will be there, returning to the scene of the '11 come from ahead defeat.  I expect a tough game on LMU's home court, but a game SLU should win. Hopefully, the team will come out firing after the gut wrenching, last second loss to Stanford on a near miracle that went Stanford's way. 

What is LM’s home court like?

[MusicCityBilliken]

1 hour ago, CenHudDude said:

What is LM’s home court like?

Typical WCC HS gym. 

[Bay Area Billiken]

1 hour ago, CenHudDude said:

What is LM’s home court like?

Gersten Pavilion, capacity 4,156. It has some theater chair seating, 2 levels sidelines, walls behind the baselines at both ends. 

[Lord Elrond]

10 minutes ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

Gersten Pavilion, capacity 4,156. It has some theater chair seating, 2 levels sidelines, walls behind the baselines at both ends. 

My High School could seat 5000 for a basketball game

[almaman]

Wiz r u back 2 fully operational?

[Cowboy]

11 hours ago, The Wiz said:

 First of all congrats to the Soccer team on their win over Bryant...Overcoming all the odds..an away game...refs...NCAA.  A great win for a great team.

Second, I am still on the road but after this game, I will be back to full pregame reports.  

And finally, this is an important game for the Bills.  This battle against Loyola will show what the Bills are made of.  Can they come out strong against Loy after the heartbreaking  loss to  Stfd or will they stumble out of the starting gate? This game will complete the first cycle (8 games) where the spreads and the data become more meaningful. The computer thinks we will come out strong. This is a different/ better team than last year. A stronger team with more depth ...a team in a better place to overcome adversity.  The game against Stfd was a freak game...not just because we lost in the final seconds but because the loss was a low probability event...a once in a blue moon occurrence.(for more info on this see the post game analysis in the Stfd spread thread.). By shaking this past game off and focusing on LM, we can still make this a very promising season.

)Game preview.... The loss had a minor effect on our numbers. We have dropped back to B+ (from A-)  Normally a game like LM wouldn't be able to move the needle back up much. but in this case a win over a decent team on the road (and beating the spread) might be just enough to get us over the hump and back to A-. Some of this upward movement is dependent on other teams but as long as we take care of business we will be fine.  LM comes into the game as a B- team.  This will not be an easy task. On offense, even with weakness the past 2 games we still have all A's except on 3 P shooting which has slipped back to B. One area that has not weakened is FT shooting...we are now # 1 ITN in FT%. Meanwhile, LM is no slouch on Off with all B's with 2 exceptions...LM is A+.. 9th ITN in Rebs and  D- on FT shooting,  This game could be decided at the charity stripe. The Bills are also looking good on D too....FG% - 12th ITN.....2P%- 11th ITN. The rest of the grades were Bs...For the Lions Def there were A's and B's with the exception of  Rebs  D-...So LM gets a lot of Rebs and they give up a lot of Rebs.  The Lions have a strong starting 5 that can shoot 3s.  It should be a close game with advantage Bills.

Injury...

Bills...No injuries

LM...Vide...Foot injury...Out for the game...injured Nov 24

Keys to the game...FT shooting...rebs...3P shooting...TOs ...Depth...Vide is a big loss for LM...2nd leading scorer...what little Depth they had is gone

WWN2D2W....Target slash...53/55/40/ 80...make some 3s...match them on rebs...TOs 11...Depth...they have a strong starting 5 but then there is a sharp drop off.  We need to take advantage of this with our strong starting 9. We need to play up tempo and when they start subbing we need to open up the spread

Bottom line...I think we should beat Loy Mar...I don't want to be Lion about that.

-Wiz, KenPom has Loy Mar offense as 218 in the country and their defense as 74 (our offense as 73 and defense as 34),  any idea why your rating of their offense seems a lot higher?

[cgeldmacher]

This should be the toughest of our three Loyola games this year.

[CenHudDude]

8 hours ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

Gersten Pavilion, capacity 4,156. It has some theater chair seating, 2 levels sidelines, walls behind the baselines at both ends. 

Thanks.  Doesn’t sound like a great venue for the Billikens to play in.

[The Wiz]

12 hours ago, almaman said:

Wiz r u back 2 fully operational?

I will be back when the Bills return home after this game.

[LARGEBILLFAN67]

23 hours ago, The Wiz said:

 First of all congrats to the Soccer team on their win over Bryant...Overcoming all the odds..an away game...refs...NCAA.  A great win for a great team.

Second, I am still on the road but after this game, I will be back to full pregame reports.  

And finally, this is an important game for the Bills.  This battle against Loyola will show what the Bills are made of.  Can they come out strong against Loy after the heartbreaking  loss to  Stfd or will they stumble out of the starting gate? This game will complete the first cycle (8 games) where the spreads and the data become more meaningful. The computer thinks we will come out strong. This is a different/ better team than last year. A stronger team with more depth ...a team in a better place to overcome adversity.  The game against Stfd was a freak game...not just because we lost in the final seconds but because the loss was a low probability event...a once in a blue moon occurrence.(for more info on this see the post game analysis in the Stfd spread thread.). By shaking this past game off and focusing on LM, we can still make this a very promising season.

)Game preview.... The loss had a minor effect on our numbers. We have dropped back to B+ (from A-)  Normally a game like LM wouldn't be able to move the needle back up much. but in this case a win over a decent team on the road (and beating the spread) might be just enough to get us over the hump and back to A-. Some of this upward movement is dependent on other teams but as long as we take care of business we will be fine.  LM comes into the game as a B- team.  This will not be an easy task. On offense, even with weakness the past 2 games we still have all A's except on 3 P shooting which has slipped back to B. One area that has not weakened is FT shooting...we are now # 1 ITN in FT%. Meanwhile, LM is no slouch on Off with all B's with 2 exceptions...LM is A+.. 9th ITN in Rebs and  D- on FT shooting,  This game could be decided at the charity stripe. The Bills are also looking good on D too....FG% - 12th ITN.....2P%- 11th ITN. The rest of the grades were Bs...For the Lions Def there were A's and B's with the exception of  Rebs  D-...So LM gets a lot of Rebs and they give up a lot of Rebs.  The Lions have a strong starting 5 that can shoot 3s.  It should be a close game with advantage Bills.

Injury...

Bills...No injuries

LM...Vide...Foot injury...Out for the game...injured Nov 24

Keys to the game...FT shooting...rebs...3P shooting...TOs ...Depth...Vide is a big loss for LM...2nd leading scorer...what little Depth they had is gone

WWN2D2W....Target slash...53/55/40/ 80...make some 3s...match them on rebs...TOs 11...Depth...they have a strong starting 5 but then there is a sharp drop off.  We need to take advantage of this with our strong starting 9. We need to play up tempo and when they start subbing we need to open up the spread

Bottom line...I think we should beat Loy Mar...I don't want to be Lion about that.

The target slash seems a tad high coming off Acrisure. What does SLU's outlook look like if they shot 5% worse across the board?

[The Wiz]

42 minutes ago, LARGEBILLFAN67 said:

The target slash seems a tad high coming off Acrisure. What does SLU's outlook look like if they shot 5% worse across the board?

This should be an easy one to answer...but it isn't.   Normally, taking 5%  off the slash line in a close game  would result in a loss. However as a result of  the loss of their 2nd leading scorer, the computer thinks we will still win the game. There has only been 1 game since his injury BUT in that game LM lost to a a stinky Stonybrook team.

Let's just hit some 3s and blow them out

[The Wiz]

13 hours ago, Cowboy said:

-Wiz, KenPom has Loy Mar offense as 218 in the country and their defense as 74 (our offense as 73 and defense as 34),  any idea why your rating of their offense seems a lot higher?

LM numbers look pretty good on offense. But they are a poor shooting FT team.  It could be KPom  puts more emphasis on FT shooting than my system. It also could be the mix of players.  KP uses an offensive efficiency  system to come up with ratings. . If you have a few players who are hot  and the rest of the team is poor  that could bring down the KP numbers. Again, the outcome depends on how you weight the various variables.

In any case, both KP and my numbers will be coming down as a result of LM's  2nd leading score being out for this game.

Let's use our depth to wear them down.

[Cowboy]

9 hours ago, The Wiz said:

LM numbers look pretty good on offense. But they are a poor shooting FT team.  It could be KPom  puts more emphasis on FT shooting than my system. It also could be the mix of players.  KP uses an offensive efficiency  system to come up with ratings. . If you have a few players who are hot  and the rest of the team is poor  that could bring down the KP numbers. Again, the outcome depends on how you weight the various variables.

In any case, both KP and my numbers will be coming down as a result of LM's  2nd leading score being out for this game.

Let's use our depth to wear them down.

-thank you, The Wiz 

-let's leave Cali after playing well and racking a nice win

[Old guy]

23 hours ago, Cowboy said:

-Wiz, KenPom has Loy Mar offense as 218 in the country and their defense as 74 (our offense as 73 and defense as 34),  any idea why your rating of their offense seems a lot higher?

Cowboy, every single predictive system for sports produces different estimated spreads before a game. The Wiz's system has this game spread at 5, Team Rankings has this game's spread at 6. Ken Pom (which I do not use) is, of course different.  Team Rankings provides 8 stats on offensive (SLU is higher than LM in 7) and 7 stats on defense (SLU is higher than LM in 4). Therefore, according to Team Rankings SLU is preferred to win. 

However, as per Team Rankings the level of confidence for a win by SLU is 3 stars out of 5.

What all of this means is that SLU will have to play a good game and use all its advantages to win this one. This is exactly what the 2 pt spread by the Wiz's and Team Rankings' systems are saying: ANYONE CAN WIN THIS  GAME, although SLU has some degree of advantage to win it.

You cannot one system for sports predictions to any other system directly. Low spreads mean this game is not likely to be a cake walk.

[Cowboy]

4 minutes ago, Old guy said:

Cowboy, every single predictive system for sports produces different estimated spreads before a game. The Wiz's system has this game spread at 2, Team Rankings has this game's spread at 6. Ken Pom (which I do not use) is, of course different.  Team Rankings provides 8 stats on offensive (SLU is higher than LM in 7) and 7 stats on defense (SLU is higher than LM in 4). Therefore, according to Team Rankings SLU is preferred to win. 

However, as per Team Rankings the level of confidence for a win by SLU is 3 stars out of 5.

What all of this means is that SLU will have to play a good game and use all its advantages to win this one. This is exactly what the 2 pt spread by the Wiz's and Team Rankings' systems are saying: ANYONE CAN WIN THIS  GAME, although SLU has some degree of advantage to win it.

You cannot one system for sports predictions to any other system directly. Low spreads mean this game is not likely to be a cake walk.

-so to crap on all of the predictive systems we need to beat them by more than the estimated spreads, right?  

[Bay Area Billiken]

ESPN has SLU -6.5, o146.5. ESPN Analytics Matchup Predictor has SLU at 66.1%.

I am expecting another dogfight. 

[Old guy]

34 minutes ago, Cowboy said:

-so to crap on all of the predictive systems we need to beat them by more than the estimated spreads, right?  

From my point of view, that is just not correct. When you have different systems basing their decisions on different sources of information and coming very close in their spread calculations, you have a high probability that what they say is correct. What you need to do is to learn how to interpret what they are saying. In this case, as I mentioned before, anyone can win but SLU is likely to have some advantage. 

What you cannot do with predictive systems is to take what they say as invariably correct. Ken Pom is not better than the Wiz or Team Rankings. If you like Ken Pom better than the others then use it, but know how to interpret what they say by comparing it to other systems. By the way, as the season progresses the differences between the systems' predictions will become narrower.

[shempie]

One more "prediction" from Haslam.

Haslametrics.com

BTW, old friend Lorenzo Romar will be on the LMU bench as an assistant. 

 

 

[cgeldmacher]

3 hours ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

ESPN has SLU -6.5, o146.5. ESPN Analytics Matchup Predictor has SLU at 66.1%.

I am expecting another dogfight. 

I have $300 of "Bonus Bets" from Fan Duel on the Billikens to cover 6.5.

[HoosierPal]

 

[Bay Area Billiken]

1 hour ago, cgeldmacher said:

I have $300 of "Bonus Bets" from Fan Duel on the Billikens to cover 6.5.

You’re a brave man! I expect another dogfight. 

[dlarry]

2 hours ago, cgeldmacher said:

I have $300 of "Bonus Bets" from Fan Duel on the Billikens to cover 6.5.

I have 365 bonus bets from Bet365 and put 100 on the Bills to cover. 

[JohnnyJumpUp]

2 hours ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

You’re a brave man! I expect another dogfight. 

Not this one, no way. Stonybrook just traveled approx 15k miles to beat LMU at their place. JJUmetrics has SLU by 17 in this one, guaranteed! If this was at Chaifetz we'd be looking at around 25+.