Abilene Christian Preview

BG rounds out the Creek event in North Carolina with Abilene Christian.  The Wildcats play in the Southland Conference and this is their first year as a full-fledged D1 school.  They were on a four-year probationary period prior to this.  They were 13-16 last year and finished tied for 8th in their conference, which is the 28th ranked conference out of 32.

Kenpom has picked them to finish 9th in the conference.  They return 9 of their top 10 players from that team.

They are 1-1 at the Creek.  That includes beating host Campbell in OT and then losing to USC-Upstate.  Overall, they are 3-3.  The Campbell win is their only D1 win, the other two are non-D1 wins.  They have lost to Lipscomb and Arkansas State in addition to USC-Upstate.

They are the first team in D1 basketball in alphabetical order.

Do you know who went to Abilene Christian?  Clint Longley.  You're an old dude like me if you know who Clint Longley was.   You know who you are.

An interesting thing to watch with this game is Jalone Friday.  Jalone actually signed to BG under Chris Jans and then took his talents to Abilene when Jans left BG.  He was the freshman of the year in the Southland Conference as a redshirt freshman.

As far as a profile goes, they average only 1 point per possession, which is well below average.  They are an excellent shooting team, especially on 2 FGs and they don't take a lot of 3s.  They are right on the national average for turnovers, but they are very poor on the offensive boards and in getting to the line, though they are the #6 team to date on the FT line in the country.

The allow 1.09 points per possession, which is 293rd in the country.  They are easy to shoot on....334th in the country overall.  That extends to poor coverage of 3s and outright bad coverage of 2s.  They also foul a lot, but they do force some turnovers and do a good job on their own defensive boards.  Those shooting numbers are just tough to overcome.

They have four players scoring in double figures.  Jaren Lewis (6'6" Jr) is scoring 15.2 PPG on 65% shooting to go with 6.8 RPG and 81% FT shooting.  Tevin Foster also scores 15 PPG on 54% shooting.  Friday (6'9" r-Fr) is scoring 14.5 PPG on 45% shooting and 42% from 3FG.  Their PG Jaylen Franklin is scoring 10 PPG on 64% shooting as well as 5 assists per game.

BG has struggled with teams that effectively attack the basket, so that will be an issue.  They will need to tighten that up.  Having said that, they should be able to score on the other end.  This is a game BG should win, making it 4 in one week.