Wednesday Hoops

Notes: Other thread had 5 pages of garbage yesterday, time for daily threads. Cornell is young, and are extremely lacking down low with injuries to Peck, Gatlin, and LaMore down low. With Buffalo, I think we get our first shot at how good this offense should be this year, as they play a team lacking in the defense department, as opposed to their opener when they got St. Peter’s (who by the way only scored 52 last night in a home loss to Robert Morris). On the flip side, the greatest depth area for Buffalo seems to be down low. Buffalo won this matchup last year by 12, but did a majority of their scoring from the guard spot. One would think they focus on getting the ball into the paint tonight a bit more as they exhibited in their opener against St. Peter’s. Cornell returns three players who scored a whopping 50 of the 66 they put up in last year’s meeting. The MAC east thus far is 7-1 on the year, with wins against WVU, Mississippi State, and Dayton (only loss was Bowling Green at Georgia). Conversely, the MAC West division is 2-6, with losses against South Dakota State and Texas Southern. Side note: Toledo probably opens the year 0-3 with losses to Texas State, USC Upstate, and Texas Pan American this weekend. NC State should be in for more of a test than what Morehead State gave them as Princeton’s defense should be quite a bit better than what Morehead brings to the table this year. Adding to that, they’ll face a better offense as well. It looks like Morehead State is playing some zone this year, and NC State won with some really good long distance shooting. Princeton will bring in a man-to-man I would think (unsure of Henderson’s defensive philosophy) and they’ll bring in the same type of offense that they’ve always ran (Henderson came from Northwestern – same offense). I’m not a big believer in the NC State offense, so we’ll see if they keep up the current pace as they have faced an inexperienced team playing a zone in Morehead State, and a team in Asheville who likes to get up and down. I alluded to the horrendous offensive team that is UL Monroe in a previous post, and they’re holding up their end of the bargain scoring 38 and 59 respectively thus far and they’ll face what I feel is their toughest defensive test of the season so far when they hit the road for Tennessee. Tennessee head coach Cuonzo Martin had really good success against Sun Belt opponents while at Missouri State as he won those games by an average of 16 points, so he will be familiar with what UL Monroe brings to the game tonight (which is not much of anything). With that said, Tennessee boards a flight for Maui tomorrow morning and gets Duke on deck. Along with that, the game isn’t being televised. I would assume it’s hard for Tennessee to get up for a game like this, but then again, they might just have to show up to get a win here. Long Beach State travels across the country to face a Pittsburgh team who more than likely is ready to go at the start of this one due to the scare they received from Rider on Sunday. Sadly, this is the best team Pitt faces until 10th of December, and they probably won’t face a top 25 team until mid January. In contrast, Long Beach State will have faced five top 25 teams in that same time frame which is something Dan Monson has never been one to shy away from. He’s had decent success against good mid-major teams, but has struggled since 2008 when he put this whole “we want to play the best” scheduling to work. The closest game to similar talent that Long Beach has come to being close was a 5 point loss at North Carolina last year, and in that game, the final score looked a lot closer than the blowout that occurred in the first half. Other than that, since 2008 against high quality teams, Long Beach State has endured losses of 40, 24, 7 (Wisconsin snailball), 10, 11, 13, 33, 23, 20, 28, 27, 17, 14, and 16. They still have trips after this game to Louisville, Kansas, Kentucky, and Xavier. I think this team wins one of those games, and keeps a few others close. This Long Beach team has four senior starters who have over 300 career starts, including all of the losses I listed above, so they’re extremely experienced going into hostile environments. I’m not sure if one of those wins or close losses comes tonight, but I got my eye on this team for the next month. Hoping they can conserve energy and not put all their cookies in one basket for this game tonight, and take a chance on them at San Diego State on Saturday. While I am not high on North Texas at all this year, they do bring in a slightly better offense than the Troy team that just hung 85 a few nights ago on Texas Tech. The problem? The UNT defense is awful, probably bottom ten in all of basketball by year’s end. They lost all five starters from a team who was beaten at the horn in the SBC title game last year and while Johnny Jones teams have been consistent on offense almost all the time, he has never been one to play defense. I really don’t expect the offense to be all the way their until 2nd semester either, when they get Tony Mitchell eligible (five-star signed with Missouri and backed out). In fact, the team was also relying on Justin Patton coming into the year (was up for player of the year in the SWAC last year), but he’s been declared ineligible for the year, although they have appealed. Other than that, the team doesn’t really have any offensive firepower, and has absolutely zero defensive experience. Assuming Gillespie continues to play at the pace of these Sun Belt teams and get up and down, Tech can name their # tonight in a slight revenge spot from last year’s embarrassing road loss. I’m pretty high on Creighton this year. I will admit, I don’t quite understand Coach McDermott 90% of the time, but it is what it is. This team they bring forth this year should be very talented and experienced both offensively and defensively, and should cause multiple matchup problems along the year, especially in MVC play. McDermott was extremely solid last year, and they’ll have Echenique on the inside for a full year as well. They also get Wragge back from injury to help with interior defense and add in some outside shooting. They lose a bit of offense off of last year’s squad, but it’s essentially addition by subtraction with the return of Wragge. Defensively, they really shouldn’t miss a beat, and probably get a bit better with Echenique learning the system. They’ll excel when they face sub-par offensive teams who have a focus on interior offense, and I think that’s what I get tonight going into UAB. There are two positions really that Mike Davis teams need to be successful on offense, and it’s been noted that the PG in his system is the utmost key to their offensive success. Along with that, he’s also based his offense on scoring from the wing position. He loses both of those positions to graduation, adding both were all conference players (I think PG Johnson was player of year). Losing those two spots really takes a hit on this offense, and they’ll have to focus on the returners who all happen to be in the frontcourt, which again, is probably the strength of Creighton’s defensive approach... 

I wouldn't look too much into the road thing. Their pre-conference road losses last year came to Northwestern & Nebraska, two teams that were ranked a bit ahead of this year's UAB team in comparison.

I look at it as more of a hedge or getting out. Can't middle or win both if you have both teams favored.

Your thoughts on Creighton this year game?

Both only lost a few. NMST probably took a bigger hit in terms of talent. As far as being a sleeper, I don't think they'll sneak up on anybody. I got them #2 in the MWC behind UNLV.