Hofstra is favored by 3.5 and RPI Forecast expects Hofstra to win by 3.5. In Hofstra's games with betting lines, the underdog won the game 8 out of 13 times. The over/under is 150.5. Out of Hofstra's last 11 games, 9 went over, and the average score was 8.1 higher than the average over/under.

http://gohofstra.com/news/2018/1/12/mens...ath=mbball is Hofstra's preview.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/sidearm.sites/h...game18.pdf is Hofstra's Game Notes:

RPI: Hofstra 84th, Drexel 253rd
RPI strength of schedule: Hofstra 76th, Drexel 226th
Sagarin: Hofstra 161st, Drexel 256th
Sagarin strength of schedule: Hofstra 82nd, Drexel 223rd
Ken Pomeroy: Hofstra 159th, Drexel 260th
Ken Pomeroy strength of schedule: Hofstra 63rd, Drexel 214th
Ken Pomeroy luck: Hofstra 9th, Drexel 42nd

I expect Gustys to eat us alive down in the post, and don’t think our defense will slow JW-F’s recent blistering scoring pace much. Unless we can slow their pace down, and we seem to be starting to push the accelerator again as we get healthy, I could see this going in an ugly direction.

However because we are expected to lose we will some how win haha

You went up 7-0, down 5 at halftime, up 1 early in the second half, down 14, down 2, and lost 91-86. You made 35 out of 70 field goals, which was 16 more attempts than Hofstra. It was your most field goals made since you made 36 at Towson 27 games ago. You had the two leading scorers with Isabell scoring 25 (9-13 field goals) and Mojica scoring 22 (9-18 field goals). Isabell surprising led all players with 5 assists but had only 3 rebounds. Williams had 15 points (7-9 field goals), 8 rebounds (the most by a player on either team other than Gustys), and your only 2 blocked shots. Demir shot field goals 4-14, which was the worst percentage by the 14 players (6 on Drexel) who made a field goal, but he led Drexel in plus/minus while he was on the court at +8. Wright-Foreman scored 20 (8-9 field goals), which tied with Gustys (10-14 field goals) for Hofstra's lead, with 1 more than Pemberton's 19. Gustys had 16 rebounds, which was a majority of Hofstra's rebounds, and nobody else on Hofstra had more than 2. Jalen Ray scored 12 and led Hofstra with 4 assists. Hofstra didn't shoot three-pointers well, but shot two-pointers 28-38 (.737) and free throws 20-23 (.870).

(01-13-2018 01:19 PM)DrachenFire Wrote:  I expect Gustys to eat us alive down in the post, and don’t think our defense will slow JW-F’s recent blistering scoring pace much. Unless we can slow their pace down, and we seem to be starting to push the accelerator again as we get healthy, I could see this going in an ugly direction.

spiker is going to crash and burn if he keeps trying to outscore teams without the personnel to do it.

doug pederson got the eagles to a 13-3 regular season with a wide open offense that was scoring 30 points a game. tonight he won a playoff game in a slug fest after his starting qb went down. you can either win by having far superior talent or knowing how to use the talent you do have. you can win championships when you have superior talent AND know how to use it. you stink when you do neither and that's the situation we're in right now.

Many of us didn't like Bruiser but atleast his teams played good defense.. now I don't know what we are good at.

someone asked in the press conference "whats the status of tyshawn miles?" ... spiker's response "still. injured." hahahahahahahaha

hes so much smarter than all of us being really crafty about divulging the injury status of his backup center.

(01-13-2018 10:37 PM)Dragon For Life Wrote:  Many of us didn't like Bruiser but atleast his teams played good defense.. now I don't know what we are good at.

That was the problem late though, his teams werent even good at what they historically were good at. They didnt play defense his last few years, which is why those years were such a struggle after '11-'12

(01-15-2018 03:32 PM)dan10 Wrote:  

(01-13-2018 10:37 PM)Dragon For Life Wrote:  Many of us didn't like Bruiser but atleast his teams played good defense.. now I don't know what we are good at.

That was the problem late though, his teams werent even good at what they historically were good at. They didnt play defense his last few years, which is why those years were such a struggle after '11-'12

Let's not also forget that the game changed The shot clock was reduced in an effort to push tempo and possessions up, the exact OPPOSITE of how Bruiser played the game. He wanted to grind out 30-33 second possessions and take one shot, hopefully making it. A point guard with the ability to do something was a luxury for Bruiser, not a requirement. That was why Rashann London was able to fill the role as a freshman and not absolutely drown.

I would also say that bruisers quality of players he brought in dropped by the end as well... with Damion Lee leaving destroyed his chance. Also the fact he left Thorton go to William and Mary just because of his hair drives me crazy to this day! We could have had Frantz Fouch Lee and Thorton.

(01-16-2018 02:07 AM)bmf25 Wrote:  Once again, lets examine the root cause of why Bruiser's quality of players dropped

1. Departures of VCU, George Mason, Old Dominion /// The CAA used to be a premiere, multi-bid conference
2. Lack of appearances on TV
3. Pennsylvania has middle school gyms with nicer facilities

This conference is still getting good players, so that is not completely true at all. Drexel has always been a tough sell even during the high period of the conference. Drexel always struggled with tv games and never had viewership anyhow. Streaming games is a better option for Drexel than having it on the comcast network that very few people had access to.

(01-16-2018 09:22 AM)dan10 Wrote:  

(01-16-2018 02:07 AM)bmf25 Wrote:  Once again, lets examine the root cause of why Bruiser's quality of players dropped

1. Departures of VCU, George Mason, Old Dominion /// The CAA used to be a premiere, multi-bid conference
2. Lack of appearances on TV
3. Pennsylvania has middle school gyms with nicer facilities

This conference is still getting good players, so that is not completely true at all. Drexel has always been a tough sell even during the high period of the conference. Drexel always struggled with tv games and never had viewership anyhow. Streaming games is a better option for Drexel than having it on the comcast network that very few people had access to.

You need to do both. CAA.TV is great for the Drexel fan living in Indiana, but the feed is really crappy and well below broadcast quality. You say that "very few people" have access to the Comcast Network. It's now NBC Sports Philadelphia Plus. 1-2 million people get this channel. I will bet that even a poorly rated Drexel game on NBCSP+ got tens of thousands more viewers than that dozens to hundreds that tune into CAA.TV. The fact that Drexel has just 1 game on cable TV this year is a complete joke. But the CAA is a lot more to blame for this than Drexel.

(01-16-2018 02:07 AM)bmf25 Wrote:  Once again, lets examine the root cause of why Bruiser's quality of players dropped

1. Departures of VCU, George Mason, Old Dominion /// The CAA used to be a premiere, multi-bid conference
2. Lack of appearances on TV
3. Pennsylvania has middle school gyms with nicer facilities

The departures of VCU, GM and ODU were huge blows to the CAA, but it also made it weaker and resemble conferences of Drexel's past, and yet after the conference became weaker, Bruiser's record in the tournament was 1-5. If he could not get into The Dance after those changes, he was not going to do it. And those were years where he had guys like Fouch, Lee and Frantz.

The problem with Bruiser's game was it was really predictable. It never changed up. Plays were so scripted that as a fan I could sit in the stands and walk through them.. just a series of handoffs at the top of the key, and on the ball picks. Who cares about the back door, right? I actually used to track the performance in second and third meetings for Drexel against teams and the results were not pretty. Ultimately though, this is way off base from the topic here..

I saw a lot from Drexel on Saturday. On the offensive end of the floor. It was by far Isabell's best game of the year more because of the vision he showed rather than his point total.

Some things at the other end of the floor really get under my skin though, like setting up a 3-2 zone that puts Harper on the low block, or pressing with four guys three quarters of the way up the court, which, as shown, leaves you just a skip pass away from a 2 or 3 on 1.

The offense is there.. This team just needs to figure things out on defense. There are some things that I think they could do, but thats for a different time.

speaking of defensive strategy...does anybody know what our plus/minus is with kararinas on the floor? i don't want to bust on the kid too hard so i'll blame the coach for having him on the floor if he's not ready. hopefully he will be one day. it just seems like it's open season at the basket when he's in there.

Don’t have a +/- on him, but do have his offensive and defensive ratings per 100 possessions.
ORtg: 92.1
DRtg: 116.2
https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/pla...conf::none

Not that anybody is doing a bang up job:
https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/sch...r_poss::26

Wait til next season with no Stretch or Tyshawn

Where did the nickname Stretch come from?

Hope this works okay. This is +/- for the season.
The other columns are:
min% - the percent of total minutes the player has played
Def% - the % of the other teams points scored while the player was in
Off% - the % of Drexel's points scored while the player was in
RDef% - Def% / min%
ROff% - Off% / min%
Rdiff - ROff% - RDef%

So for Kararinas - the defense is worse when he is in although the offense is a bit better as well - perhaps the pace is higher.

It is interesting though that when he is in with Austin, they are +20 in 44 minutes.

(01-17-2018 09:26 AM)Water Boy Wrote:  
Hope this works okay. This is +/- for the season.
The other columns are:
min% - the percent of total minutes the player has played
Def% - the % of the other teams points scored while the player was in
Off% - the % of Drexel's points scored while the player was in
RDef% - Def% / min%
ROff% - Off% / min%
Rdiff - ROff% - RDef%

Wow. Those numbers are just pure embarrassment. All CAA opponents should be licking their chops to step on the floor against this team.

Speaking to WB's stats, I'll caveat that these things don't become stable until about 30 games into the season, so everything thus far should be considered small sample. Only major outliers should be reviewed with scrutiny, which leads me to takeaway the following:

These numbers seem to confirm my eye test with regards to Isabell (who I think has improved and is fitting better into the system of late as well) as the teams best player, and also my overwhelming concern with Troy Harper. I haven't viewed him as THAT atrocious thus far, but will be taking a far more critical eye to his performance in the next few games to see if anything stands out to me.


JB, this isn't my forum to run, but I'd tell you to be very careful about discussing statistics that you don't understand if I were moderating this place.