Savannah State Preview

The Falcons take the floor for the third time in a week when they host the Savannah State Tigers on Thursday night at Anderson Arena.  Savannah plays as a D1 independent, which is a particularly tough way to go.

BG did play them last season in Georgia, and it probably goes down as one of the more disappointing games of the season, at least to Brian Moten, who said this:

"I'll probably never be over that," BG's senior guard said. "Hopefully something good happens like I get married and then I'll get over it."

What happened?  Well, BG had a 35-14 lead at the break and lost the game by 3 points.  We gave up 43 points in the second half and lost the game, while failing to hit too many shots on our own.   Savannah State finished the year at 15-14.

This year, the Tigers are 4-3.  Their losses are to Georgetown, North Florida, and Central Connecticut State, and while their wins are over Central Connecticut State (yes, they have played twice), Webber, Western Illinois and Virginia-Wise.

Everything is relative here, the Western Illinois win might be decent and the the North Florida loss probably isn't too bad.  There are 2 non D-1 wins on the docket right now.

But I don't know how BG can look past anyone right now.

I think we will see a pretty similar style to ours.  Even against that schedule, they are average 53 points per game, which is pretty low.  Really low, actually.  To their credit, they also allow 53 points per game, which is also really low.

Even on a tempo-neutral basis, there points per possession is only .89 which is lower than BG's (.97).  They play a VERY down-tempo game, with 60 possessions per game.....even BG is at 66 so far.

In other words, we should be able to establish our defensive foundation against these guys.

They do not shoot the 3 especially well, but have been very effective on the offensive boards.  They commit turnovers on about 25% of their possessions, (BG is 19%), but they also force turnovers on 27.9% of their opponent's possessions, which is really very solid and a big part of their success.

They do give up shots, so if our veteran point guard and teammates can take care of the ball, and we can get shots, we should be able to score some points.  Then, this is an opportunity for our defense to really stop somebody, because, based on their performance, these guys are ready to be stopped.  They appear to crash the offensive boards, so we need to watch our fundamentals there and then there could be some baskets in transition the other way.

Tracy Rankins is their best scorer (12 ppg) and Arnold Louis (or Louis Arnold, not sure) is the best rebounder with a little over 8 per game (he is only 6'7").

If we're a work in progress, this is an opportunity to get better and get a victory.