Friday, February 01, 2013

Saint Louis Thumps Butler

Saint Louis 75, #9 Butler 58
The biggest hole in Butler's lineup is ball handling. They've struggled against pressure defenses all season long. St. Louis doesn't full court press, of course, but their defense is that very aggressive Rick Majerus style. And they forced 14 steals here (part of 23 total Butler turnovers). Rotnei Clarke committed six turnovers while Khyle Marshall committed five in only ten minutes on the court. It's the fifth time this season that St. Louis has forced double-digit steals in a game.

That all said, St. Louis does this too inconsistently. They're only forcing 7.3 steals per game (tied for 130th in the nation), and they've had games like an 82-80 loss to Rhode Island where they allowed 1.21 PPP. They're still inconsistent offensively (though Jordair Jett had a big game here with 19 points on 8-for-12 shooting), so they need elite defense to beat good teams. Of course, while Butler is a good team, they're nowhere near the 9th best team in the country. At some point their ranking will get closer to where they really are as a team, which is borderline Top 25.

St. Louis is now 15-5 overall and 4-2 in the Atlantic Ten, with wins over New Mexico and Butler, along with bad losses to Washington, Rhode Island and Santa Clara.Their Sagarin ELO_SCORE should move up to around 45th win this win. They're right on the fat part of the bubble at the moment, and probably need to get to 11-5 to feel confident about their at-large chances. At 9-7 or 10-6 they're going to enter the A-10 tournament with work left to do.

Butler drops to 4-2 in Atlantic Ten play. There are now ten teams with two or three losses in the Atlantic Ten... the standings are a mess. I still think VCU and Butler are the class of the conference, with VCU my pick to win the conference tournament. But the A-10 tournament should be a ton of fun. I'm really looking forward to it.

Butler will try to bounce back on Saturday, against Rhode Island. St. Louis will also play at home on Saturday, against Dayton.

Niagara 93, Iona 90, OT
This game had a pretty wild finish. Niagara came back from a 15 point second half deficit, and as regulation was running out they were trailing by three points. On that final possession they took four shots before a Juan'ya Green three-pointer went in to send the game to overtime. And in overtime it was Green again nailing a three in the final moments, this time to deliver the win. Green was only 2-for-10 behind the arc for the game, but those two makes were the two biggest shots of the game. He finished with 26 points, while Antoine Mason had 30 (on 13-for-28 shooting). Iona was led by David Laury's 24 points and 16 rebounds.

The MAAC is one of the tightest conferences in the nation. The top five teams coming into today were all rated between 99th and 128th in the nation by Pomeroy. With this win, Niagara is now narrowly the conference leader in efficiency margin (+0.11 PPP) over Canisius (+0.10 PPP) and Iona (+0.07 PPP). With this win Niagara is in the driver's seat for the MAAC regular season title (they're now two games clear of second placed Iona), but I don't think it's clear that they're the best team.

The concern for Iona is that they've now been swept by Niagara. Both of these teams are much better offensively than defensively, so their games are always crazy and fun. But Iona's biggest problem with regards to Niagara is rebounding. It's a problem that they're going to need to solve to win the MAAC tournament.

Iona doesn't get much of a breather. They'll play on the road at Canisius on Saturday. Niagara will be at home on Saturday to face Loyola-Maryland.

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