Yeah, I think the issue is that we haven’t played any of these non-con matchups tight the last three years.
Highest profile non-con games (last 3 years) and day before game day betting line:
2019 @Purdue: Purdue -2.5 point favorites 2020 neutral Zags: Zags -6.5 point favorites 2021 @Houston Houston -5 point favorites
So those lines were all relatively close. But we lost those games by a combined 72 points (each at least by 20 points).
I’m going in with low expectations. And I’d be really curious to see our ATS record against Top 75 teams in non-con (small sample size) cause I think we maybe getting too much credit from Vegas after the natty.
Fucking game-day!!! Let’s go. Excited to be talking about a game and not the senseless violence that happened less than a week ago. Sports has a great way of healing people/communities during times of angst and loss. I have a feeling the boys will play with great passion and pride tonight. A couple of thoughts:
We better slow this game down to a fucking crawl. We have run more opportunistically this year which I like but we were playing incredibly inferior competition. Let’s find the Patriots equipment manager and see if he can take some air out the ball during pre-game and slow this one down.
Biggest game of Reece’s career tonight? Could be. Lots of NBA scouts will be in the building to see Baylor’s guards, especially Keyonte George who is a likely lottery pick. A great opportunity for Reece to step-up and have himself a game. As fresh pointed out, he isn’t an under-classman anymore.
I keep going back and forth on if Kihei will play a lot this game. His big-game experience and defense are attributes, but their guards are superior and bigger. Baylor pushes everything to the sideline/baseline and traps the ball-handler. Very important for our guards to keep their dribble alive and make good passing decisions in those high-stress trapping moments. If we win, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him have a good game.
Kadin - get your hands ready! This is the one position where I think we have a talent advantage against baylor. He must catch the ball and finish as there will be a lot of passes from the guards who have been forced baseline and will look to dish. Catch it and finish the play. Also, don’t get in foul trouble. Please - I’m asking as a friend.
Tony’s best friend is God. God wants us to win this week I think. Never hurts to have God on your side, and we do, so lets play with passion and get the W.
I think the media and even the Vegas lines are trying to analyze this as a normal game when it just isn’t. Three man weave, for example, didn’t even acknowledge the murders despite talking about the game for 2-3 minutes.
I would be very surprised to see a normal level game tonight. Think we either play out of our minds or just don’t have the needed intensity. Think this will be a 15+ point blowout either way
I heard that too on 3MW, and was mildly surprised. But while I agree with you that it will be a factor, it’s way too hard to know in which direction. Which is why I think they basically just ignore it (in their spreads and/or bets). While Vegas folks collect and analyze a lot of data, I don’t think anyone has a real firm grasp on how teams respond to tragic events that are close to them.
The circumstances add a lot of uncertainty to this game. But I think even under normal circumstances, there would be tons of uncertainty, because we just don’t know what kind of team we have. We haven’t had much of an opportunity to assess all the things we think make this year’s team different than last year’s - the new players (Dunn, McKneely, BVP), the improved consistency from Armaan, the improvements from Reece and Kadin. I know the focus last year was poor shooting, but I think our defense was at least as big a problem. Did it change with a year’s experience?
This will be a good test of whether we’re actually different this year, or just incrementally better. If we win, I’d be thrilled. If we’re competitive, I’ll be disappointed but optimistic for the future.
100% ?Vegas analytics have no way to quantifying what happened in Charlottesville. Also not to sound harsh, but Vegas is influenced by the money and while the impact on Hoo nation is massive, the impact national is minimal at best. A lot of bettors don’t have the perspective of the impact that we have.
One more point from me: Just noticed that Eamon Brennan’s betting column doesn’t mention it either, and he covers the Hoos enough to know what’s going on (he’s in the DC area, I think). I suspect another part of it is that these guys are just trying to silo the game, and not discuss the tragedy from a gambling standpoint, which from a coverage/editorial standpoint probably makes sense.
Great point. Probably a smart editorial move to avoid it. I could see it feeling disingenuous to put a line or to about the shooting and then jump into gambling.
On Kihei, I think he’s been excellent offensively this year, albeit against limited competition. He’s looked very quick with the ball and has been playing within himself.
Amazing what kind of player he is with passable talent around. It’s why the weird focus on him individually was always misplaced (not talking about the Reece-Kihei pairing conversation, which is a bit different).
