Sunday, November 20, 2011

Saint Louis Thumps Washington

Saint Louis 77, Washington 64
This game caught the attention of a lot of people today. The final score doesn't give a good indication of just how much Saint Louis dominated this game. The Billikens led by 25 at halftime, and grew their lead to as high as 29 in the second half before taking their foot off the pedal and cruising to the finish. Some hot shooting drove the early Saint Louis lead, though they cooled off in the second half. The biggest frustration for Washington was ball handling. Point guard Tony Wroten is Washington's star freshman this season, and I'm confident that he'll be a good player by the end of the season, but he looked like he didn't know what to do with the pressure defense Saint Louis was showing him. Wroten finished with one assists and five turnovers, contributing to a team total A/TO ratio of 0.63. Of course, Washington has a player who should be an elite point guard already (Abdul Gaddy), but he's still finding his game legs after being hurt so much of last season. If Gaddy and Wroten can maximize their potential, Washington could have one of the best backcourts in the nation. But that's a long way away right now.

While some people are surprised that Saint Louis is good this season, that doesn't include me. In my most recent bracket projection I had Saint Louis seeded higher (an 11 seed) than Washington (a 12 seed). Saint Louis is 3-0, and also has a 19 point win at Southern Illinois on their resume. They'll deserve some Top 25 votes in the new polls tomorrow, in my opinion. The Billikens head next to the 76 Classic, where they'll open on Thanksgiving afternoon against Boston College, a game they should win fairly easily. In their second game they'll play either Villanova or UC Riverside. Their final game will be against either New Mexico, Santa Clara, Oklahoma or Washington State. Looking at that bracket, I'd expect Saint Louis to win two of those three games. Anything less than that would be a disappointment for them. Washington will be disappointed in their performance, but this would have been an upset victory if they'd have actually won. And they are still 3-1 with respectable wins over Florida Atlantic and Portland (the latter a 30 point destruction). As poor as the Pac-12 has been playing, Washington hasn't really fallen far behind the other top teams (Arizona, California and perhaps Washington State). They next play Houston Baptist on Friday. After that they'll play at Nevada, and then will go against Marquette as part of the Jimmy V Classic at Madison Square Garden.

#2 Kentucky 62, Old Dominion 52
Old Dominion was the best team Kentucky has played so far this season, by quite a bit, and so it's not a surprise that they were the first team that made Kentucky really look like a bunch of freshmen [edit: obviously Kansas is better than ODU, and I temporarily forgot about that Kansas/Kentucky game when writing this post. ODU just made Kentucky look like they were the first good team Kentucky has played]. Marcus Teague, in particular, looked confused and frustrated by Old Dominion's backcourt pressure. He finished with six points, two assists and six turnovers. There's no reason for Kentucky fans to worry, though. When you ask true freshmen to lead your team at the point, you're going to have games like this early on. Calipari should have him playing better by the time the SEC season begins. Despite the 21 turnovers as a team, the Wildcats did collect 9 blocks, 7 steals and 13 offensive rebounds. They played hard and fought their way to a deserved victory.

Despite the loss, Old Dominion looked better here than they had in any other game this season. After their narrow victory over South Florida I said that the loss of Frank Hassell and Ben Finney seemed to have really taken its toll on their offensive rebounding, which had been the best facet of ODU's game the past few years. The stats backed me up - after leading the nation each of the past two years with a 45.3 and 42.1 offensive rebounding percentage, respectively, they came into today 157th in the nation with a 33.2 OR%. They lost the rebounding battle again here, but not by much, and they particularly looked strong in the second half.

ODU is now 3-2 overall, with a win over South Florida and no bad losses yet. They next play Vermont on Wednesday, and then East Carolina. With only one BCS conference foe remaining on the schedule (Missouri, on December 30th), they're going to have to go on a winning streak to get themselves into serious at-large discussions. Kentucky is now 4-0, and looking like one of the five best teams in the nation. Their next quality opponent will be St. John's on December 1st, but their real next test will be North Carolina on December 3rd. That could potentially be a match-up between #1 and #2 in the nation, so stay tuned.

Nebraska 83, Rhode Island 63
This game was never close. Nebraska led by as much as 24 points in the first half, and as much as 30 points in the second half. The biggest reason was hot outside shooting. The Cornhuskers opened up that lead by hitting 8 of their first 16 three-pointers. Nebraska's defense also did a good job of frustrating Rhode Island's ball handlers, taking advantage of their desperation to force 18 turnovers, and holding them to 0.91 points per possession. This was the best Nebraska has looked all season. They had won their previous two games, but one was over a cupcake, and the other was a worrying two overtime victory over a bad USC team. This big win should give them confidence for a Wednesday night game against Oregon. They will play Wake Forest on November 30th, and will head to Creighton on December 4th.

Rhode Island is now 0-3, though all three have been true road games against quality opponents (Texas, George Mason and Nebraska). This was the only of the three to not be close. We knew Rhode Island wasn't a Tournament team, but they're young and they're playing tough, and they should win plenty of games once the opponents become more manageable. Their next three opponents are all strong, though all will be beatable for Rhode Island (home games again Hofstra, Boston University, and Cleveland State). Their first true cupcake of the season won't be until November 30th, when they play Brown.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Old Dominion was the best team Kentucky has played so far this season, by quite a bit"

That is one serious slap in the face to Kansas.

Jeff said...

Yikes, you're right, I totally forgot about that game. Kentucky just looked like ODU was the first tough team they've played.

I'm going to go fix that. I'm sorry about that error.