The Eastern Illinois Panthers

So, Eastern Illinois is making its way back to AA tomorrow. This is a team we beat 52-48 last year--it was, in fact, our worst shooting game of the year, and we won, perhaps providing the most extreme example yet of not letting your FG% determine....well, anything.

Here's a review of that game from this really cool site I found. These guys have an awesome collection of stats available for college hoops. What you see below is based on the four key factors (as seen by basketball wonks), and how they game out in this game, last year.

Stats by StatSheet.com

So, last year, both teams rebounded awfully, but we got enough boards and (wow) got to the line more and won the game. Again, check this site out if its the kind of thing that interests you. There's also a BG-specific twitter feed that sends you stuff every day.

So, what about this year?

Eastern is 3-7. (They won 7 last year). They lost by 13 to Ball State, (not the MAC's strongest team) and have beaten Manchester (DIII), Western Illinois and Tenn. State. They have not won on the road. They played a pretty good Evansville team tough on the road, but their wins are nothing special.

This team SHOOTS really well. They are 47% and 39% for the year, and their effective FG% is in the top 25% of the country. So, this does present a challenge for our team, which is making its living on stopping shooting. They also take care of the ball really well, but don't get to the line a whole bunch. They don't shoot a ton of threes, but they are pretty accurate when they do.

Defense....well, that's a different story. They are pretty grim on that end of the court. There are only about 15 less efficient defensive teams in the country so far this season...they don't get turnovers and teams have a really high effective FG% against them. They are average on the defensive boards.

They have one scoring threat, Romain Martin, who averages 17 points and has a variety of lettuce named after him. Their rebounding is pretty well distributed.

So, I guess here's where I see. This is a game we should win at home, but it will be interesting to see how our guys respond to this team, that shoots well. For that reason, it isn't a gimmee.