Akron Game Thread

[section221jay]

The selection committee badly needs a liaison or advisor, somebody whose job is to follow the ticketing and local rooting interests at each site, and then keep the committee read in.

If they have somebody like that, they ignore him or her, because the dilemma they keep creating for Creighton staff and fans is ridiculous and unnecessary. It’s even worse because CHI routinely sells out for NCAA events, and many sites do not. I don’t think Pittsburgh has (could be wrong).

Those fans have a conflict too, because Duquesne tips less than an hour before the Pittsburgh games (in other words, us) start.

Just Amateur Hour stuff. More planning goes into grade school plays.

Yeah...there are going to be a lot of tickets available for resale for that 1st session. Possibly the Saturday session too depending on how the times work out (assuming CU beats Akron, of course). Not sure how Illinois travels but I wouldn't think the other 3 teams involved in the early session are going to gobble up too many of those tickets.

[bleedblue]

Really excited to see how the refs call the tournament and I'm very hopeful they won't let us get beat up with no calls every possession. If the refs are halfway decent then Trey and Baylor will get a lot of free throw attempts that they've been robbed of this season.

[cujaysfan]

Akron better be GREAT guarding the PNR and more importantly jamming up the lob

because if they are starting a 6'7 C - Kalk should FEAST all game.

If I'm Akron i have to make that priority one in defensive prep. because not to make an old option football analogy for our husker lurking friends - that's the full back dive piece of our option game. so who cares about the QB and RBs on pitch (driving the rim and shooting threes). And IF i'm Mac - i'm putting in wrinkles to run that from the wing too with Trey and Baylor because they just can't match up to that.

Polyfro can see how much zone those guys play for the primer - I'm guessing that's the easiest way they can really counter that. But then you're opening yourself up to one of the very best midrange ballers in Trey to tear you up from the elbows - or everyone else shooting bombs from three.

[Dough Boy]

[Jaybird]

And, there's this. Historically, there's just under a 15% chance that a 14 will upset a 3. One in every seven games. It last happened in 2021, when Abilene Christian took down Texas.

But that means there have been two full years, eight straight 3-14 games, where the 3 sent the 14 home. In other words, a 14-3 upset is overdue. Which is why I'm going to risk all the mockery and go out on a limb by predicting exactly that. So, here goes:

Colgate beats Baylor.

[bird_call]

Addendum: I thought I would dig into this TO/Rebound thing some more. So I looked at our game against Providence in the BET.

If you add up their Steals (7), Blocks (3) and our Turnovers (11), it comes to 21. If you add our Steals (3), Blocks (5) and their TOs (5) it comes to 13. So they got 8 more possessions than we did as a result. they also got 9 OBs to our 7. So add that up and they had 10 more possessions as a result than we did.

You are double counting. Steals cause TOs.

We had 58 FGA and 26 FTA or ~71 possessions that ended in a shot or FTA. They had 70 FGA and 14 FTA or ~77 possessions that ended in a shot or FTA.

We lost because our eFG% was an abysmal 43% and we lost the possession battle (TOs, boards).

[mannygakou]

And, there's this. Historically, there's just under a 15% chance that a 14 will upset a 3. One in every seven games. It last happened in 2021, when Abilene Christian took down Texas.

But that means there have been two full years, eight straight 3-14 games, where the 3 sent the 14 home. In other words, a 14-3 upset is overdue. Which is why I'm going to risk all the mockery and go out on a limb by predicting exactly that. So, here goes:

Colgate beats Baylor.

A few close calls for 3's in the past few years as well - Xavier/Kennesaw St and Wisconsin/Colgate were down to the wire.

[Jaybird]

Andrew Catalon and Steve Llappas have been assigned to the Pittsburgh site.

[Realhoops]

Addendum: I thought I would dig into this TO/Rebound thing some more. So I looked at our game against Providence in the BET.

If you add up their Steals (7), Blocks (3) and our Turnovers (11), it comes to 21. If you add our Steals (3), Blocks (5) and their TOs (5) it comes to 13. So they got 8 more possessions than we did as a result. they also got 9 OBs to our 7. So add that up and they had 10 more possessions as a result than we did.

You are double counting. Steals cause TOs.

We had 58 FGA and 26 FTA or ~71 possessions that ended in a shot or FTA. They had 70 FGA and 14 FTA or ~77 possessions that ended in a shot or FTA.

We lost because our eFG% was an abysmal 43% and we lost the possession battle (TOs, boards).

I did a lengthy post in another thread -- but over the course of this season, our eFG% hitting .50 and our three point % hitting .30 are the real consistent correlations to victory. When we do that, we win almost 90 percent of the time. When we don't do that, we nearly always lose. Oversimplification to show that all we have to do is be fairly "average" on the offensive end and we win -- the games we have lost are mostly situations where we were just absolutely dreadful shooting the ball, not just "off."

[D Jay Fan]

Does it make sense to have 2 BE teams matched up in the 1st round? We put the hurt to them when they were #7 in the nation this Fall and they want revenge. We tied them in the league but with our 3 to 2 victory we got the 3 seed in the west. We are talking soccer right?