Ohio lost to Kent State at home in mid Jan, giving up 1.25 ppp. Looking back that seemed to be a turning point. They were 3-4 in conference at the time, then won 9 of their last 10 largely keyed by improved defense. I’m not suggesting they’re good on that end, but that’s a flaw in looking at a full season of data on Kempom and such. Teams evolve. What they did in December isn’t very relevant.
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He’s not saying they can’t give us a game or even beat us. He’s saying it’s odd that seemingly everyone (other than Andy Katz) is picking us to lose
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It’s a trendy upset pick for a bunch of reasons.
With regard to to Ohio, They have an incredibly skilled guard who can catch fire, which is typical of teams with upset potential. They’re small and good shooters which has given UVA problems before (although as discussed above, they may be not as bad a match-up as one might initially think). Also, while they struggled early in the season, they’ve been incredibly hot recently and have steadily improved over the year. Look at their metrics on their Bartorvik page - everything’s on an upward trajectory.
On our side, we’ve been good, but inconsistent. We went though a mini-swoon at the end of the season before pulling ourselves together for the last couple games. This squad doesn’t blow teams out very often (although we’ve gotten blown out ourselves) and lets a lot of opponents hang around. Now add onto that us having these COVID issues and not being able to practice before the game/potentially missing some players.
The folks covering the tournament have to pick some upsets because upsets always happen, and that’s the case for ours. It’s pretty fair to me. I’m personally optimistic, but don’t hold that pick against them.
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Vegas thinks we win. I’ll take those guys over all these taking heads.
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True, and I am not as pessimistic as a lot of folks. However, the fifth place finish is misleading. They played only 14 conference games because of Covid postponements. All of the teams that finished ahead of them played at least three more games than they did. And they had one cancellation against each of the four MAC bottom feeders: Eastern Michigan, Western Michigan, Central Michigan, and Northern Illinois, who finished a collective 12-48 in the league.
It is unlikely that they could have caught Toledo for first place if they had played a full league schedule, but they might well have finished second. The two teams that finished directly ahead of them were 12-6 to their 9-5, which isn’t much of a statistical difference.
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This game is so hard to predict because of two factors:
- our pause
- assembly hall sucks for shooting. Which team will adapt to that arena better?
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Wow that sucks. Especially missing that paycheck.
We will win this one easily assuming coaches make the right moves. Which of course they will
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My man, Always with the words of wisdom and full of confidence
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wow those are some big-name officials
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I love your confidence man. Always makes me smile. Hope you’re right
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This one is easy Big B
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Serous ? Doug. How big a deal is it if we’re limited to Just a Gameday walk thru and shoot around at Assembly Hall instead of a full practice?
For that matter if we only get in one real practice Friday before we leave then the above?
Dont think is a big deal at all. They are Zooming and scouting and doing individual workouts. From what I have watched of Ohio we drill em
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Are we going to be the one higher seed that gets to play the “nobody believed in us!” card first round? I’m kinda OK with that.
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Vander Plas’ dad played with Tony Bennett at Green Bay and liked him so much that he named his son after Tony. Bennett Vander Plas.
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I’m with Dougie Fresh. Hoos by a million
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Colorado can play that card too.
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Nova too
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