So, I'm putting my simulation sheet to work for this matchup. It's actually pretty awesome that we can take a group of random players and match them up against another group of random players to predict an outcome.
There were some obvious tweaks I need to make for the simulation to work such as mpg needed to be evened out for all players to 20 minutes, and then the defense ratings had to be adjusted for their disregard for defense in these match-ups.
In order to figure out how loose I had to be with defense, I took the results from the last two years and calibrated the defensive "loosening factor" to achieve the resulting game total, not the score. It showed that for both years, the players loosened their defense by around 52%. I applied the same loosening factor for this year's matchup... and the results are in.
All scores are Team WORLD - Team USA
2018 Prediction Score: 145 - 133 vs Actual Score: 155 - 124 -- Game Total Prediction: 278.15 vs Actual Game Total: 279
2019 Prediction Score: 141 - 168 vs Actual Score: 144 - 161 -- Game Total Prediction: 309.02 vs Actual Game Total: 305
For 2020:
2020 Prediction Score: 152 - 155 -- Game Total Prediction: 306.90