Friday, January 20, 2012

Nebraska Over Indiana: Not As Shocking As You'd Think

Nebraska 70, #13 Indiana 69
This game isn't the shocking upset that many are making it out to be. First of all, note that Nebraska isn't as bad of a team as their resume suggests. Getting Jorge Brian Diaz and Dylan Talley back has been huge. Those two combined for 20 points and 8 offensive rebounds in this game. Also note that Nebraska only really plays a seven man rotation - when they were missing two of those players they had to give major minutes to players who wouldn't otherwise be seeing the floor. In their two games previous to this they took Illinois down to the final seconds on the road and beat Penn State fairly easily at home.

Second of all, Indiana hasn't proven either that they can win consistently on the road, or during a "taking care of business" game. Their only true road win since November came against Penn State, the worst team in the Big Ten. In addition, if you take out those Ohio State and Kentucky upsets, they actually have a fairly weak resume. Obviously those wins don't get taken out, and they'll mean a lot on Selection Sunday, but it just makes you question whether Indiana is really an elite team. The Hoosiers held Kentucky and Ohio State to a combined 1.01 PPP, but are now giving up 1.11 PPP in Big Ten play. That's a sign that their defense is getting lazy against these softer opponents.

The Hoosiers are now 3-4, and they should push that back to 4-4 after a home game against Penn State on Sunday. But after that? They'll play road games at Wisconsin, Michigan and Purdue over the next two weeks. We'll learn just how deep Indiana's road woes go.

Nebraska's poor stretch earlier this season doomed any realistic at-large chances, but they're now a respectable 2-5 Big Ten play. They'll play Ohio State on Saturday, and after that will go on the road to play Iowa.

#18 Creighton 66, Missouri State 65
Caleb Patterson had a shot at the buzzer to give Missouri State the win, and obviously any one-point win always requires a bit of luck, but I give Creighton a lot of credit for even being in this game at the buzzer. It's no secret that Creighton's success this season has been due to shooting the ball. They are leading the nation in eFG% and are shooting a mind-boggling 45% as a team on threes (they have a nine-man rotation, and seven of those players are hitting 40% or better on threes). But here, on the road against a very good Missouri State team, the shots weren't falling. They finished only 5-for-16 on threes, despite the fact that Missouri State isn't really known as superb three-point defenders (the Bears are tied for 140th in the nation with a 34.0 3P% against for the season).

This season, Creighton has hit below 40% on threes in just three games. One of those games was against a cupcake, another was a tight game against UAB, and the third was this game. How did they pull it out? Two things. First, without the outside shots falling they did a really nice job pushing the ball into the paint. They hit 69% of their two-point shots, most of them only a couple of feet from the basket. Second, they played excellent defense, holding Missouri State to a 43.0 eFG%, the second worst shooting performance they've had all season long.

This was a game that Missouri State badly needed after that bad loss to Evansville. This loss drops them to 4-4 in Valley play and only 11-9 overall, as well as just 6-9 against the RPI Top 200. They'd have to win four or five in a row to get back into the bubble picture. They'll play at Bradley tomorrow, and then at Illinois State on Wednesday.

With this win, Creighton moves to 17-2 overall and 7-1 in the Missouri Valley, with wins over San Diego State, Wichita State, Northwestern and Northern Iowa. Even a 7-3 finish over their final ten games should be sufficient to lock them into the NCAA Tournament. Something like a 4 or 5 seed isn't inconceivable if they have 27 or 28 wins by Selection Sunday.

Villanova 84, Seton Hall 76
As poorly as Villanova has played this season, they have shown some life the past few games. The biggest change has been that Jay Wright has convinced his players that they're not good at shooting threes (they're shooting a brutal 30.9% on the year) and they're starting to attack the rim. They earned a remarkable 41 free throws in this game, hitting 34 of them (they're hitting an excellent 76.4% at the line as a team this season). In their other win in Big East play, against DePaul, they earned 34 free throw attempts. I see a correlation.

Of course, only having two Big East wins at this point in the season isn't a wonderful situation, and Nova is still below .500 overall (9-10). They'll try to improve their Big East record to 3-5 tomorrow at St. John's. They'll play at Louisville on Wednesday.

Seton Hall is 15-4, but they're down to 4-3 in Big East play. They have wins over West Virginia, UConn, VCU and Dayton, along with a bad loss to USF. Their RPI is 6th, though their Sagarin ELO_CHESS is a more realistic 27th. They'll be in decent at-large shape head into the Big East tournament if they can get to 9-9. They'll play Notre Dame next, on Wednesday.

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