Quote:
Originally Posted by ligastar
thoughts on Saturday's "Battle Royale of the Bluebloods" chuck?
big disparities in how these two teams score their points:
UK: 69th in point distribution from made 3-pointers; 340th from made FTs
UNC: 17th in point distribution from made FTs
UNC wants to get to the line and does a good job of making those attempts from the stripe. UK wants to lean on their ELITE marksmen (Dillingham, Reeves and Sheppard) to score pts. one of UNC's weakness on defense (and to be fair there are several weaknesses) are that RJ and Cadeau are short guards. UK's shooters will likely feel comfortable when they release many of their outside jumpers. UNC's best guard defender is Seth Trimble (who is listed as the same height as Dillingham and Sheppard) but his FC/40 is 5.2 (tied for worst w Withers for the worst rate on the team from primary players)
UK's defensive FTRate is 56th, so UNC might not experience as much success at getting to the line as this team is used to. we'll see
UNC's rebounding is middling compared to 'Ole Roy's standards (90th OR, 60th DR), while UK's 280th OR rank is a glaring weakness for your Lexington boys. this is good news for UNC as the Heels really struggled vs UCONN in keeping them off the O-boards (though the Huskies made most of their shots)
at the end of the day, UNC may be able to lean on their D1 experience (4th in the nation) and grind out a W in what kenpom predicts will be a last possession game
Man I don't know. Cal is trying to figure out how to make big men work in this line up. Think he will try go all out trying to subdue Bacot, even for possibly the weakness of this game (3rd string center might finally be available for this game, which would also make Cal play more bigs this game). Also Cal will try to make Justin Edwards work as long as possible.
So for my weak prediction.
At this point in the season I think it will come down to Dillingham. Dillingham is the definition of hot or cold. For the record, I'm not saying Dillingham is the best player, but he is the most variance.