Go Green....Go White....Spartan Preview

And so the moment has arrived.  Tomorrow, the Michigan State Spartans will become the first Big 10 men's basketball team to make its way onto the floor of the Stroh Center.  BG has been putting a huge amount of effort into promoting the game, and let's hope that there is a good crowd there.

The Spartans are 19th in the AP poll with an RPI of 53.  They are 18th in the kenpom.com rankings.  The Spartans are 9-2 this season, and while they lost to UConn in Germany, they have beaten Kansas and Boise as well as some other teams with RPI in the 200s.  Their other loss was @Miami in their only true road game of the season to date.

The quality of the program cannot be debated.  They have made 15 straight NCAA tourneys and have made 2 Final Fours in the last four years.  This is a consistent, model program in college basketball.

Their hallmark is defense.  They are allowing 59 points a game, which is 18th in Division I.  They are very good against the shot--#13 in effective field goal %--and combine that with being 22nd in preventing offensive rebounds.  That combination right there makes you very tough to beat.  They are about average in creating turnovers and free throw rate (due to their physical style) but it all adds up to .84 points per possession which is 14th in the nation.

Offensively, they are the team I wrote about when I talked about what you had to do to win if you weren't going to shoot 3s.  They are 297th in the country in the percentage of their points coming from 3.  And yet they are getting 1.07 points per possession which is in the top quarter of the country with an effective FG% of 53%, which is pretty high.

They do that by hitting 54.5% of the 2-FGs, which partly from how they play offense and partly from getting 39% of their available offensive rebounds, which is also in the top 10% of the country.

They get to the line fairly well and make more than 70% when they get there.  They are struggling a little bit with turnovers.

NCAA Basketball Stats

Their leading scorer is a guard, Keith Appling, who is scoring 15 points per game.  He's shooting 48% which is really good for a guard.  He also is leading the team with 4.3 assists per game.

Their only other double figure scorer is Branden Dawson (6'6") who is scoring 10 points per game.  (He's shooting 58%).  Adreian Payne (6'10") is getting 7.7 rebounds per game and Derrick Nix (6'9") is also averaging seven rebounds per game.  Both are in the top 5 of the Big 10 in rebounding.

For the Falcons to compete in this game, a couple things will need to happen.  First, BG will need to control the pace of the game--MSU plays at an above average D1 pace.  Second, BG has to have an unconscious night shooting, and playing the kind of defense they have played over the last 2 games, just against Michigan State.

MAC off to shaky bowl start

Just to be clear, no gloating will be done here.  UT beat BG and BG's game still lies ahead.

The simple fact is that Utah State beat UT by a wide margin last night, although the game was much closer than all that.  Utah State only led 13-9 with 7:00 left in the game, and then scored four times in the last 7 minutes to create what appears to be a blow out.

David Fluellen re-injured his ankle and left the game after a few carries and Dan Molls was injured on the opening kickoff and did not return, and so you had a UT team playing against a very good Utah State team without arguably its two best players and eventually that showed up on the field, both in all those 4th Quarter TDs but then also in a missed 4th and 1.

Anyway, my point is this.  The MAC landed on the radar this year, and when you do that, expectations get raised.  Everyone--us included--talked about the great year the MAC had.  Now, the league has to deliver in these bowl games, and the MAC is an underdog in every single game.

If the conference lays an egg during bowl season, the football establishment will gleefully shove the league back in a drawer--or off the radar, if you don't want to mix metaphors.

People were hard on the NIU choice, and we chirped back.  Now, it has to play out on the field.

Michigan State--fans take a trip down Memory Lane....

The Spartans come to town Tuesday to play the Falcons in men's basketball.  I'll do a game preview tomorrow, but I wanted to take a little trip down memory lane first.

BG hosted MSU on December 1, 1990 at Anderson Arena.  The Spartans, coached #5 in the country, were coached by legendary Jud Heathcote.  They got the full Anderson treatment.  The place was hot and claustrophobic.  A Big 10 team used to playing in Arenas was suddenly in a gym, inbounding a basketball with people four feet away screaming.

It was the kind of magic that arena could deliver and sadly rarely did in the waning years of its life.  But with a huge crowd it was (I will always contend) the best environment I have ever been in for a sporting event.

BG got a little momentum and rode the crowd to a 13 point win--without research, I would say it was the second biggest win in the Arena's history with the first being the Loyola victory in the 1960s.

The best thing, and I mean the BEST thing, was that Heathcote just went nuts.  Said he would never play in a MAC gym again.  Furious about the officials, and, I learned this week, yelled at our band.

(Jud apparently BG had also beaten his team the year before in his arena.  Facts take all the fun out of a tantrum.)

If you care to relive it, a Falcon fan loaded the entire game onto youtube and you can watch it below. (Yes....that is Michael Reghi.)



Finally, BGSU's @jknavel posted a copy of the final stats on twitter this week, which I reproduce here for nostalgic purposes.

You might recognize the name of Steve Smith--NBA All-star, Olympic gold medalist, NBA Champion.  Also, the Mark Montgomery on that sheet is now the Coach at NIU.

I do give Tom Izzo credit, even at a 2 for 1 with the students gone, I'm not sure any other Big 10 team would have agreed to play in our arena.  It will be a huge thrill for our players, I'm sure, and I hope we manage to generate a good crowd for the game.  I suspect you will have a strong MSU contingent in town as well.

MSU leads the series 10-3, but we are 3-3 when MSU has been ranked.  Look, this is a really good team and there are going to be ridiculous favorites over us.  Having said that, no game is decided until it is played and often times our players bring their best games to contests like this.  It will be interesting to see.

Men's Basketball and 2-point FGs

The fact that BG doesn't like to shoot the 3s is well known.  We are 240th in 3-FGs made and 288th in percentage.  Actually, BG's team is shooting more than normal...at 171 for attempts,which is in the middle of D1.

This was the subject of BG's preview in College Basketball Prospectus...their point was that it is fine to not shoot 3s, but if you do that, you have to make your 2s and get to the line.

For perspective, last year BG averaged 1.02 points per possession and this year it is .98, which doesn't sound like a lot but in college basketball it is.

The work from the field is bad.  BG is 292nd in the nation with an effective field goal % of 44.5.  (That's a metric that credits teams with 1.5 makes for a 3 and 1 make for a 2, and thereby compensates teams for the higher risk long shot).

As noted above, BG is trying for an average amount of attempts but in the bottom 1/4 of D1 for making them.  This is obviously going to make it hard to score.

Now, there are two ways to make that up, as mentioned above.  From the field, you are going to have to make a higher percentage of your 2-FGs...and when I say higher, I mean that you need to be really, really high on your 2-FGs.

The theory here would be that if you aren't shooting 3s than you are shooting shots closer to the basket...and, in the case of the Falcons, the idea is to "play in the paint."  And, therefore, you are taking high percentage shots and therefore should have a higher percentage.

Unless that doesn't happen.  People have talked about the death of the mid-range jumper.  The reason is, if you are five feet in from the 3-point line and you shoot a jumper, you might have a slightly higher percentage of making it but it isn't high enough to justify the point you gave up for those five feet.  You might be more accurate...but not enough to make it worth it.

And I think that might be part of the problem for the Falcons.  Ultimately, the team is 275th in D1 in 2-FG% at 45%.  If you aren't going to focus on 3s, you just have to be better than that.  For reference, last year's team was 112th at 49.6.

The other part of the equation is free throw rate, which is how many free throws you attempt as a percentage of your FG attempts.  BG is at 32.3% which is 233rd in the country and not good---it is also the lowest of the Orr Era by a large margin.  We've helped that a little bit by shooting them well (actually 58th in D1 at 73.5%), but we're right in the middle of D1 in FTs made.

And that is how you struggle offensively.  In essence, you don't have one part of your offensive game that is strong...you're shooting 3s and missing them and when you do get a closer shot you are not close enough or you aren't making those either.  And, you don't get fouled that much, though when you do you are doing nicely making the shots.

Spartans??? What is your profession?

 In the midst of all the coaching craziness, we are now prepared to play in the Military Bowl against the San Jose State Spartans.  As always, we are going to spend some time looking at our opponents, and in this case, it is someone we don't know very much about (which is what makes bowl games interesting) and so let's do a little primer on San Jose State.

1910 football team.  The "N" stands
For Normal.

The University was founded in 1857, which makes it one old-ass university.  California had only been a state for 7 years when the school was founded.  They have about 30,000 students.

They are a big supplier of talent to Silicon Valley.  Gordon "Moore's Law" Moore went there, as did founders or co-founders of Seagate Technology, Oracle and ratemyprofessor.com.

Other prominent alumni include Dian Fossey, Lyn Nofziger, Joe Trippi, Gaylord Nelson, Michael Deaver, Jessica McClintock, The Smothers Brothers, Amy Tan, Robert Scoble, Peter Ueberroth and Bobbi Starr.

They also report having the inventor of the VCR and the Wave.

Looks like BG?

Sports wise, they sport Bill Walsh, Dick Vermeill and Terry Donahue, along with Patty Sheehan.  They are one of only 4 schools that have two super-bowl winning graduates.

Their most famous sports contribution globally was in track.  The school was known as "Speed City" and sent 3 runners to the Mexico City Olympics, where they raised their fists during the national anthemn.

They started football in 1893.  Today they play in the WAC and will join the Mountain West next season.  In fact, I believe that our bowl game will be the final game in the history of the WAC.

"Sammy"

As you know by now, their coach, Mike McIntyre, has accepted the job at Colorado and will not coach in the bowl game.  The interim coach will be Kent Baer, who is uniquely qualified for his role, having served as the interim coach for Notre Dame after Ty Willingham was sent packing in whatever year that was.

This has certainly been a year to remember for the Spartans.  From 2009-10 they were 3-22 and this year was only their third winning season since 2000.  

We'll have more time to look at the football side of things as the game draws closer.  

Latest on Clawson Rumors...

And honestly, I think that's all they are.

Last time we talked, it was Colorado and Temple.  Mike McIntyre is going to Colorado and yesterday it was reported that Clawson had removed his name from consideration at Temple, which must have meant he or someone had allowed it to be in consideration.

Anyway, what makes this so difficult to follow, especially for the mainstream "fact based" media is that good info is hard to come by.  For example...if you want to say someone didn't "interview" what does that mean?  If a person says he had "no conversations" does that mean that his agent did?  And, how many coaches (not including Darrell Hazell) directly denied interest in moving on before doing so.  Finally, if you try to prove something didn't happen you are trying to prove a negative and that's supposed to be impossible.

Yesterday, the internet informed us that Barry Alvarez was in Northwest Ohio.  Presumably, he was interviewing a Coach.  The Wisconsin media jumped to the idea it was Matt Campbell, but that dude is in Idaho (presuming he didn't fly back to talk to Alvarez) for their bowl game, so it wasn't him.  Which leaves us with a slimmer level of options of Northwest Ohio people with college coaching experience, including Carty Finkbeiner, Dino Dawson, Dick Cromwell, Frank Lauterbur and Dave Clawson.

Well, it didn't take long for that go get winnowed and interpreted to mean that Alvarez was talking to Dave Clawson, eventually resulting in a tweet by ESPN's Joe Schad.

A couple of things.  First, Alvarez could have been recruiting and he could have been meeting with someone for advice on the coaching search.  Or, he was jonesing for a Packo's dog.

The Wisconsin fanbase, as represented on twitter, went beserk.  They don't like the idea one bit.  They immediately call up the Tennessee Experience...and then there's the fact he has a losing record in his only FBS Head Coaching gig.

I find it hard to believe that Clawson will end up with that job.  Not that I don't think he's a good coach, because I think he is.  But, there's uncertainty in any decision and Alvarez certainly is in a position to find someone with less uncertainty than Clawson.

Alvarez is a strong actor and will do what he thinks is right. I just don't think he ends up with Clawson as his top choice.

Football nabs Verbal #14

Internet reports are showing the BG has a 14th verbal for this year's class.  It is D-tackle Shannon Smith of Marist HS in Chicago.  Reports are that he had offers from a number of other MAC schools, who we always like to beat to a recruit.  He's considered undersized at 6'1" 265 but he sounds like a pure football player and that's often the kind of guy who is a real game changer in our conference.

Welcome to the Falcons, Shannon.