Game Preview: Gophers vs. Illinois Fighting Illini

Illinois is an awfully tough team to figure out.  On one hand, they're ranked just 34th at kenpom.com using his advanced stats, so you'd tend to think the 14-2 start was a bit fluky and dismiss them as pretenders.  On the other hand, however, they just spanked Ohio State by almost 20 (an overrated Ohio State, but still) and already own a road win at Gonzaga by double digits and a neutral site win over Butler by nearly 20.  Those are not three wins a fluky team should have.  Their losses (to Missouri on a neutral court and @ Purdue) are both acceptable as well.  No clue what to make of these guys.

One thing is for certain, they're already better off than the last several seasons since they finally jettisoned world's worst coach Bruce Weber and, with Tracey Abrams emergence, they actually have a viable point guard for the first time since the good ole days of Chester Frazier.  Perhaps the best thing about Abrams is that he's allowed Brandon Paul to spend more time off the ball where he's more of a natural, and it's showed as Paul has blossomed into maybe the second best scorer in the league behind DeShaun Thomas.  Paul has always had a tendency to fall a bit too in love with the 3 (which seems to be Illinois' mantra this year - more on that in a minute) but can score from anywhere and excels getting to the rim.  His numbers are up across the board this year and is the best perimeter players the Gophers have faced this season.  If Austin Hollins is going to be the defensive stopper we think he is (and I think he is) this is his big test to prove it.

Paul is certainly a concern for the Gophers, but the entire Illinois team is dangerous because they've simply fallen completely in love with the three-pointer.  They shoot an absolute ton of them (43% of their FG attempts come behind the line - 15th in the country) and make a whole bunch (hitting 36% on the year).  For most of the year I figured this was totally a fluke since they were a terrible shooting team last year (just 30% from three, one of the worst marks in the nation) and it's pretty close to the same team.  It's been going on a bit too long to be a total fluke, however, so perhaps there's an alternative explanation.  Much as how a great coach can make his players better, perhaps a horrendous coach can suppress such simple skills as jump shooting.  Much like the West Canaan Coyotes truly blossomed as a team after Coach Bud Kilmer was forced out, perhaps too these Illini merely needed to cast out Bruce Weber to suddenly all become marksmen from deep.

I don't really know the reason, but suddenly all five major contributors have turned into Ray Allen.  Paul has increased a bit but you could attribute that to playing more off the ball and the "senior step up", and D.J. Richardson is actually a little bit worse, but Abrams (from 26% to 32%), Tyler Griffey (from 29% to 41%) and Joseph Bertrand (from 30% to 44%) all made the Moxon leap.  Can they keep this up?  Really, it depends on if you believe in the Varsity Blues theory, and that's also what's going to swing this game.  The Gophers defend the three pretty well, and the other team they played that shot a lot of them at a high percentage (Richmond) they held to 4-20 shooting.

And yet Richmond is not West Canaan (more like Bainville, am I right?), and Illinois is clearly better and almost everything than Richmond.  The Gophers are much better than Illinois in pretty much every way, and the Gophers are going to absolutely destroy them on the boards.  There's no reason for the Gophers to lose this game, except that Illinois' big strength is what they like to call "the great equalizer" (no, not Lincoln).  Illinois is going to shoot a lot of threes, and probably hit a lot of threes.  Can the Gophers limit that?  Can the Gophers grab 75% of their misses (they get 49.7% on the season, Illinois allows 34% - that's really bad) and just keep scoring every trip down the court?  Who wins the turnover battle?

It all comes down to what you believe.  There's the theory that the Gophers are a Final Four team.  Then there's the theory (not directly competing but you know) that Illinois is the Varsity Blues team, and they won the title.  IT ALL COMES DOWN TO WHAT YOU BELIEVE.

Minnesota 73, Illinois 68.

Yep.

Monday Musings

 Are you in the mood to read 1,537 words?  Actually more now since I'm writing this introduction?  You are?  Oh good.  Because here they come. 

-  We've written about the Span trade, the Revere trade, and the Correia signing here already so I suppose I should put something to figurative paper about the Mike Pelfrey signing but I am struggling so hard to care. 

This adequately expresses my feelings.

I guess I'm in favor simply because it's mirroring what my strategy would be with this team: trade everyone with value, get as many prospects as you can, fill holes for this year with short, cheap contracts, and plan for 2014.  Signing Correia and Pelfrey does that, although giving Correia a second year is pretty mind-boggling.  Pelfrey should be a better pitcher than Correia (not saying much), but he's coming off Tommy John surgery so your mileage may vary.

Pelfrey is a former first round pick who has been thoroughly mediocre in his career (similarity scores at his age - 29 - put him like a Carl Pavano or Jake Westbrook at that age: ok, but not necessarily good.  A one year, $4 million dollar contract is a pretty good deal for him, especially because he's coming off Tommy John surgery which these days seems to make players better.  If he can get back to his mediocre ways or even slightly better - put up like a high 3s/low 4s ERA - he could end up being a good piece to trade at the deadline.  I'm realizing now I'm pretty obsessed with trading anything and everything of value and throwing in the towel this year.  And it's December.  Gonna be a fun season.  I do like the Rule 5 Ryan Pressly pick-up though.  Probably I could write about that and actually sound positive, but I'm not going to.  Although I will mention that I saw on MLB.com where they list each team's top 20 prospects that Pressly slots in at #17, so that's probably good, right?

-  What in the world is going on with the value of top prospects these days?  The Phillies send their #1 prospect to the Twins for Ben Revere.  The Royals send their top prospect (and #3 in all of baseball) away for James Shields, while the D-Backs ship out their #1 (and #5 overall) for good fielding no hitting shortstop prospect and a middle reliever.  Now the Jays are trading their #1 (#11 overall) and #3 (#83) for R.A. Dickey who, rumor has it, is 38.  It's starting to look like teams are looking more or more for when they have their "window" and just going for it, and since it's not just one team but multiple this may be the new trend.  The Phillies will have Revere for a while and the D-Backs got back a guy they hope is their SS for many years, but both the Royals and Jays are clearly going for it now, acquiring players who won't be on the team in 3 years.

The famous Doyle Alexander for John Smoltz trade worked out well for both team's and I'm guessing both organizations would do it again if they traveled back in time, but generally there's a pretty clear winner and loser in these types of deals.  If the Jays and Royals can get back to the playoffs for the first time in 20+ years even once you can probably say they made the right move, if not they payed an awfully steep price for the same results they'd have gotten anyway, but with a dash of disappointment mixed in.  That is, of course, assuming the prospects work out which is pretty much a given since they always do.

- Speaking of baseball transactions the one time that isn't doing anything that baffles me is the Baltimore Orioles.  Yeah, there was an awfully lot of luck on their side to make the playoffs, but they made them and clearly needed to make some upgrades if they want to get back, but they aren't doing much of anything.  So far their biggest moves are claiming Alexei Casilla, trading Robert Andino to Seattle for Trayvon Robinson (note:  I have no idea who this is), and re-signing Lew Ford to a minor league deal.  They need a corner OFer, a 1B after letting Mark Reynolds walk, a second baseman since Brian Roberts is always hurt and I'm pretty sure Casilla isn't the answer, and starting pitching help because Chen/Hammel/Gonzalez/Tillman/Britton is not going to get you into the playoffs again.  Also I just noticed that their designated hitter right now is Wilson Betemit - I mean these guys need some help.

I have no idea why they aren't after Swisher or LaRoche, not to mention Edwin Jackson or trying to at least work a trade with somebody like the Dodgers who have too many pitchers or figuring out something at 2b, even if it's just signing someone shitty like Kelly Johnson (he's better than Casilla).  Then again who knows, maybe they're smarter than me and waiting for the market to settle a bit and going after bargains.  They have plenty of young arms that could get decent pieces back to plug into the roster, but they've barely even been mentioned in rumors as far as doing anything that a whole bunch of waiver claims and minor league deals and getting rebuffed by Nate freaking Schierholz.  I don't get it.  If Baltimore's front office thinks they're in a place to compete again this year they're in for a big ole face slap.  Prime candidate to take the UNDER on wins once those wagers are released.

-  You know how two of our reader's (Loretta08 from Sippin' on Purple and Bear) hate hate hate Kevin O'Neill and consider him bar none the worst coach in NCAAB?  I agree he's pretty awful, but without question Bruce Weber is the worst.  The dude did nothing but underachieve at Illinois (after finishing national runner-up with Bill Self's players), including famously refusing to recruit a point guard instead content to force shooting guards to play out of position (first Demetri McCamey, then Brandon Paul) with mostly disastrous results and now he's screwing up Kansas State as well.  The Wildcats made the second round of the NCAA Tournament last year under Frank Martin and have basically the same team back.  They were ranked 37th in the AP Preseason Poll and 30th in the ESPN poll, while the Big 12 coaches picked them to finish 5th in the conference and I ranked them as the 33rd best team in the country.   So decent.

Now I readily admit there's nothing particularly damning here at 7-2.  Their only two losses are to Michigan and Gonzaga (and Gonzaga just killed them), but looking deeper it's just empty.  They barely beat a bad Delaware team and a horrible George Washington team, and two of their wins are over a non-D1 team and USC Upstate who is basically a non-D1 team.  They still might end up in the race for an NCAA bid because don't forget these are Frank Martin's players, but the end for this program is on the horizon.  Mark my words, in 2-3 years this program will be back in the depths of anonymity because BRUCE WEBER IS AWFUL.  Truth.

 

She hates Bruce Weber too I would assume.

-  It feels a bit weird writing all these words and not talking about the Gophers since I'm supposed to be a Gopher blog, but I live-blogged the last game so every thought I had that night (and many I didn't) has already been written.  Instead, real quick, I wanted to take a look and compare this year's Gopher team to the one from 1996-1997 which made the Final Four (yes, they did).

Both teams were coming off NIT seasons with minimal personnel losses from the prior year (1996 team lost only David Grim) and nothing in the way of impact freshmen coming in (that was the Loge/Sanden/Archambeau class - thanks dick).  Both had success in an early season tournament.  Both came into Big Ten play with just 1 loss (1996 loss was at Alabama, a team that would fail to make either the NIT or NCAA Tournament).  That team was ranked in the top 10 for the first time following the January 11th game against Michigan.  That year's Big Ten was much weaker than this year's version, with only Indiana (x2), Michigan (x2), and Illinois ranked at the time the Gophers played them and none ranked higher than 15th.  The Gophers were clearly the class of the league in 1996 as shown by winning the conference with a 16-2 record.  This year's team is going to be in a much tougher conference.  I remember thinking that team was special after the win @ Indiana, and I'm already thinking this year's team is special.  Seriously, I can barely handle waiting for that New Year's Eve day game.  We're going to learn so much.

-  Since I know you're dying for an update I made the semi-finals in both my important Pretend Football leagues and lost both, despite having the highest scoring team in both leagues this year, by scoring the fewest points either team put up all year thanks to having Ray Rice, Demaryious Thomas, and Hakeem Nicks in both leagues.  I hate that stupid fake sport.  I quit.