11
DEC
2017

NCAAB December 11th

comment : Off

NCAAB Yesterday: 0-0-0, (0.00%) +0.0 Units
NCAAB Season: 19-16-0, (54.28%) +1.4 Units

Not much out there to choose from today with only 6 lined games on the schedule. I did however find a play though, here’s what I’ve got…

Minnesota (-20.5): The Golden Gophers have lost 2 straight and 3 of their last 4 after starting the year 7-0. Tonight however I think it’s take out your frustration time for them at home against lowly Drake. To Drake’s credit they are off to a 5-4 start but outside of a neutral site win against Wake they haven’t done anything impressive. The reality is this is still a team that’s going to be right around the bottom of the MVC this season and will be in over their heads tonight. To put it simply they don’t have the talent, the athletes, the size or speed to keep this game close. This is a very small team as they only have 2 guys over 6’3″ who see any significant minutes at all. This is a problem against a Minnesota team that starts guys at 6’5″, 6’6″, 6’8″, 6’10” and then can bring in another 6’7″ and 6’8″ guy off the bench. Tempo wise Drake will try to keep this thing under control and slow the pace but Pitino wants to get out and run and at home I think they’ll be able to control the pace and get the kind of game they want. Drake typically plays games in the 67-69 possession range but I suspect this one will be around 72-74 which is clearly faster than they want to go. Timmer is the leader of the Bulldogs and as 4 year starter at PG he’s their unquestioned best player. Tonight however dealing with Mason and Washington he’ll see a talent level that he doesn’t often see playing in the MVC. Given their lack of size that I already mentioned it’s not surprising that Drake likes to do most of their offensive damage from 3 point land. That on the surface might appear to work tonight as Minnesota is allowing opponents to shoot 38.5% from 3 point land, but I’ll trust the much larger sample size of last season where the Gophers were a top 15 team in 3 point % defense. Just about everyone from last years team is back so I expect some serious regression back to the norm and their 3 point defense numbers to start drastically improving. At the end of the day this feels every bit like a 25 to 30 point win for Minnesota and maybe even more depending on how long it takes Pitino to empty the bench.

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