The Green Board

Tonight's schedule:

2012 Tournament Schedule Game Site Date/Time TV

Western Ky. #16 vs. Miss. Val. #16 University of Dayton Arena (Dayton, OH) Tuesday, March 13 6:40 pm truTV

Iona #14 vs. BYU #14 University of Dayton Arena (Dayton, OH) Tuesday, March 13 9:10 pm truTV

Now it IS interesting. 1 pt game with 2+ minutes left.

It's early and I love Bierce but my goal is to blow out his posts from the Bubble thread. Down with Bierce!

Day 2 of the play in games. Tomorrow is the real deal!

Lamar did not rally, but last night we had 2 crazy rallies. Cal should win, but I would not be surprised to see the Bulls take it to them.

Exactly, those early games remind me of preseason baseball for some reason. Lol

OK, we start off tomorrow with two games that I find very intriguing:

Colorado St. vs. Murray State

A lot of people wonder whether either of these teams is for real. The question about Colorado State is whether it can win against a good opponent away from high altitude. Every single one of its victories against a high quality opponent came at Fort Collins (elevation 5000 feet). It didn't win a conference game on the road until it met up with cellar dweller Air Force in the last game of the season. Meanwhile, it went 0-5 against the field on the road/neutral with an average deficit of 18.6 per game. Ouch. Add road losses to Stanford (by 12), Wyoming (by 19--of course, Laramie is at 7000 feet), @ UNI (by 6), @ TCU, and @ Boise State (ouch, even by 1, ouch), and you are looking at a team that has real questions surrounding it.

Murray State has played only 3 tournament quality teams all year, but it has beaten them all. It won @ Memphis by 4. It beat So. Miss. on a neutral floor in 2 OT (OK, maybe "neutral" isn't fair--Murray, Kentucky has to be at least 300 miles closer to Anchorage than Hattiesburg, MS, is). It beat St. Mary's by 14 at home. That's not a lot of tournament quality opponents, but that is a pretty good showing against them.

I'd tend to worry about Murray State against a good rebounding team. It had the second lowest defensive rebounding % in the OVC. However, Colorado State was not a good rebounding team, either. 5th of 8 in the MWC in def. reb. %; 6th of 8 in off. reb. %. Of interesting note, it looks like the MWC was as a conference dominated by defensive rebounding. As a whole in conference play, MWC teams had the defensive team grab 72.6% of the boards. That is an incredibly high number. It might be explained by Air Force getting the offensive rebound only 15.5% of the time.

So, I tend to think Murray State is safe here. Both teams are playing for recognition, I think, so I can't see one team as having superior motivation in that regard, but Murray State is much closer to home and likely to have the crowd behind it.

Southern Miss. vs. Kansas State

I've commented about this game on the Eustachy thread. I can't figure it out, because I don't know which K-State team will show up. It generally can't shoot, but it gets a lot of point blank looks from being such a ferocious team on the offensive glass (.398 in conference play). Meanwhile, So. Miss. is the best defensive rebounding team in C-USA (.731 in conference). Big board battle. Who wins? Dunno.

As I said before, So. Miss. comes in limping--losers of 4 of 7, all played against non-tournament teams, with the wins being over Rice, SMU, and ECU by a total of 12 points, and needing OT against ECU. On the other hand, K-State swept 2 seed Missouri and was swept by non-tournery Oklahoma. One thing that might be a cause for concern for So. Miss.--Henriquez-Roberts has become something of a monster. He had a quiet (all right, lousy) game in a victory over A&M, but his other last three games have him scoring 19 points, getting 11 rebounds, blocking 13 shots, and staying out of foul trouble. He's shooting 23 of 33 in those three games (69.7%). In the past, Henriquez-Roberts' biggest problem has been a tendency to pick up fouls, particularly dumb offensive fouls by trying to drive from the perimeter. (Just what you want your 7 footer doing). He's figured out that isn't a good idea and is just setting up in the post. He's not real thick and doesn't wear donw opponents by leaning on them, but Bolden is even more of a stick.

I think K-State wins if the good K-State shows up, but there isn't any guarantee of that. Maybe So. Miss. can flip the switch and get it going again, but they come into the tournament on one of the worst streaks of any team in the field.

I'm not complaining but none of these games are too close. (except for the one I couldn't see on truTV here at work)

Thanks for the breakdowns. I am leaving to go home here in about 10 minutes. I expect Vandy to take Harvard out behind the woodshed.

Worst 2nd half of the day so far? Colorado St. Rams.

No, I worked a full day. The schedule looked a bit weak and I could watch at work.

You are talking about me being an adult????