Oakland MBB Preview

Oakland is coached by BG grad Greg Kampe (played football and basketball).  He is in his 39th season there--only Boeheim has been at his school longer.  He has built this program, starting at DII, moving to D1 and then into the Horizon Conference.  And the NCAA tournament, where they have played 3 times, with a play-in win to their credit.  They were last in the 2011 tourney.  They have been pretty consistently successful but had three straight losing seasons before a 20-12 record last year.

This is the 11th meeting and the series is tied 5-5, with BG winning the last 2, both at the Stroh.  BG has won only once @ Oakland, and that was in 1999.

BG won last year's game in a thriller that came down to a buzzer-tip that didn't go down for the Griz. Overall, a very close game, 9 ties, 12 lead changes and BG led for 17:08 and OU for 16:08. It was BG's best win of the season until they beat OU near the end of the year.  Oakland had blown UT out and beat Oklahoma State as well.

They are picked #4 in the Horizon Conference this year and opened up with a blow-out win over Defiance (92-27).

Their leading scorer, Jamal Cain, graduated.  Jalen Moore is the 2nd leading scorer and he is back.  He was injured for the opener, but the word seems to be that he will be ready for Friday.  Moore and 18 with 7 assists and 7 turnovers last year against BG and scored 15.5 on 34% shooting for the year (23% from 3FG) and 7.7 assists.

He was pre-season All-Horizon.

They started two transfers, Keaton Hervey (Missouri State) and Rocket Watts (Mississippi State, Michigan State).  and they both scored in double figures--but who didn't.  Hervey was a started at Missouri State, Watts was once on the all-Big Ten freshman team.  There's one other transfer, Lorne Bowman II who came off the bench at Wisconsin.

Blake Lampman is a returner, he scored 7 a game on poor shooting and also Trey Townsend, who started every game last year, scored 12 PPG on 56% shooting and added 5.6 RPG.

The biggest note from last year is that Oakland plays a 1-3-1 zone, the kind of zone that drives coaches crazy.  It is aggressive and you don't see it much, making it a difficult prep.  BG struggled for a while against them but ended up at .97 points per possession...and defended an average defensive team to .96 points a possession.

BG shot the 3 well, as you'd expect against a zone...and had decent shot selection, as opposed to coming down and jacking a shot up. The 1-3-1 is designed to create turnovers, which is did, but it also allowed BG to get extra possessions on offensive rebounding, which you would also expect.

It will be an interesting game.  Can BG handle the ball against this defense?  Can BG hit outside shots?  Will the Falcons--without Plowden--be able to get to the offensive boards?  And can the Falcons extend the defense from the Air Force game to an better opponent?