Saturday, January 28, 2012

Is Nevada The Favorite In The WAC?

Nevada 68, New Mexico State 60
Home rims are supposed to be kind, but they weren't here for New Mexico State. They had 13 more offensive rebounds, earned 15 more free throw attempts, and committed the same number of turnovers. But they had only a 37.5 eFG% while Nevada had a 64.1 eFG%, and that's how they ended up losing. A bunch of the credit has to go with a good Nevada gameplan defensively. New Mexico State is a team that is strong in the paint, but they can't shoot the ball. Nevada packed the paint with their defense and dared New Mexico State to shoot over the top. Nevada's offense, on the other hand, has an array of excellent shooters, led by Malik Story (3-for-7 on threes), Deonte Burton (4-for-8 on threes) and Olek Czyz (7-for-10 from the field). Nevada's early 18-7 lead came after Burton and Czyz combined to start the game 8-for-8 from the field. New Mexico State just doesn't have the offensive firepower to easily overcome a deficit like that.

This is no embarrassing "bad" loss for New Mexico State, though. Nevada, very quietly, has won 14 consecutive games to move to 17-3 overall and 6-0 in conference play. Their best win in non-conference play was at home (and in overtime) over Washington, but since entering WAC play they've won on the road at both New Mexico State and Utah State and are in the driver's seat for the WAC regular season title. They will try to avoid a letdown game tonight at Louisiana Tech.

New Mexico State beat New Mexico early this season, but then lost to UTEP and have now lost consecutive games in WAC play, at Hawaii and now at home against Nevada. I'm not sure I want to panic about this result, though. The reality is that even with their offensive struggles, they still would have won this game if Nevada hadn't opened up on fire. There's no reason Nevada will repeat that in the WAC tournament. Many of these players were part of this two years ago when they shocked Utah State and earned the WAC's auto bid. They've stumbled the past two games, but I'm not ready to give up on them. I'll be very curious to see what happens when these two teams play again, in Reno, on March 1st. The Aggies will play next tonight, at home against Fresno State.

#25 Wisconsin 57, #17 Indiana 50
Indiana's road woes under Tom Crean continued here. They are 2-30 in road Big Ten games under Crean, with both wins coming against bottom-feeder Penn State. They are 1-4 in road Big Ten games this year, and with a 3-1 home record are 4-5 overall. It seems to me that they have a different emotional attitude on the road, and it leads them to play softer. Wisconsin has a fantastic half court defense (they lead the nation in eFG% against), and they were very physical in the interior here. Cody Zeller was entirely shut down, scoring only 7 points on 2-for-7 shooting - he actually sat for most of the final ten minutes of the game. In their home games, Indiana has showed strong physical play, going after loose balls and fighting back. But on the road it seems like they'd prefer to whine about bad calls rather than match the physicality of their opponents. Yes, I thought more of the bad calls favored Wisconsin than Indiana here, but it was no different from what home teams typically get in college basketball. Everybody else figures out how to win road games, and Indiana's going to have to figure it out as well if they expect to finish in the top half of the Big Ten.

The Hoosiers still have those big wins over Ohio State and Kentucky, as well as a quality win over Minnesota, and they only have one bad loss (Nebraska), so their Tournament seed is still good at the moment. They'd be a 4-6 seed if the season ended now. But that will start to drop if they can't beat a quality Big Ten team on the road. They'll play Iowa at home tomorrow, but then will go on the road for a pair of tough games - at Michigan and at Purdue.

Wisconsin has won five straight games now to move to 6-3 in Big Ten play. A couple of weeks ago there were media folks that didn't know about advanced stats that talked about Wisconsin as a bubble team, but that has gone away. It would take a remarkable collapse now for the Badgers to fall onto the bubble. They'll play at Penn State on Tuesday, and if they win there will have a huge game next Saturday at home against Ohio State. There's a chance that first place in the Big Ten could be on the line there.

Stony Brook 66, Boston University 59
This was the only game going on late on Friday night and I ended up watching a bit of it. The Stony Brook crowd was great, as crowds tend to be in important conference games in tiny arenas. The difference in this game was the play of Stony Brook inside. They don't have very much height, but their front court is strong and physical, and they scored 26 points in the paint and won the rebounding battle (a 35.7 OR% versus a 24.0 OR% for BU).

It seems to me that a concern for BU is Darryl Partin, who is asked to do everything and tries to make every play, but who isn't quite good enough to pull it off. He takes 37.2% of his team's shots when he's on the floor, which is fifth most of any player in the nation. He's got some good teammates, though, and the team would be better off passing the ball around more. He only has a 47.3 eFG%. When you've got a player like Patrick Hazel who has had success at a higher level (he played for Marquette before transferring) and shooters like Travis Robinson and point guard DJ Irving, you've got other weapons. And on the final chance for BU here, down by 4 with around 30 seconds to go, that the team tried to force the ball to Partin in corner while he was being tightly defended, and he couldn't handle the pass for a turnover.

The America East has a tight three team race. With this win, Stony Brook grabs a one game lead over BU. Vermont is another half game back, though even with BU in the loss column. Stony Brook has now beaten both teams at home, and lost at BU. BU lost at Vermont as well, and will have the return game at home on Wednesday. In other words, all three teams have held serve at home thus far. The regular season title means more in the America East than in other conferences - while the early rounds of the America East tournament rotate (they'll be at Hartford this year), the highest remaining seed gets the tournament title game at home. So if the seeds hold, the second and third placed teams will have to play each other in the semifinals just for the right to play the regular season winner in the finals on their home floor. The home team has won the last four America East tournament title games.

I'm a little hesitant to pick Stony Brook here because of history. The America East has been dominated by BU and Vermont the past few years, with those two teams combining to win six of the last ten tournament titles. But these are not the same programs. Both BU and Vermont have new head coaches. Former Columbia head coach Joe Jones took over at BU after Patrick Chambers took the Penn State job. John Becker took over Vermont after Mike Lonergan took the George Washington job, though Becker had been an assistant at Vermont for five years, so there was less of a transition. But the fact that Stony Brook has already won their home games against Vermont and Boston University, have not lost to anybody else in conference play, are perfect at home this year and are playing as well as any of them means that they are now my pick to win the America East.

Stony Brook's next game will be Wednesday against Binghamton. BU will play Vermont at home on Wednesday.

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