Saturday, December 28, 2013

South Alabama: Three keys and a prediction

South Alabama is one of the better teams to come to the Pan American Center the past couple years. South Alabama played the Aggies tough last year (a 58-52 Aggies win) at their place, out rebounding the Aggies 38-37.

This year's South Alabama team may be even more undersized and that has been the kind of team that seems to bother the Aggies. But NMSU is on a roll right now.

 I think the Aggies win comfortably, 77-60

Keep it rolling: NMSU should be well rested. Daniel Mullings will play tonight. Marvin Menzies said he could have played against Northern New Mexico. This could be the best team the Aggies play until March with WAC play opening next week. It's a good way to get into conference mode against a team that will mirror many of the teams in the WAC, undersized, quick with more than one guy capable of hitting shots.

Rebounding: South Alabama's biggest player in the rotation is their leading scorer, 6-7 senior forward Augustine Rubit, who averages 18 and 10. I think the Aggies have a good chance to hit the offensive rebounds tonight.

3-point defense: Around Rubit, South Alabama has five players with at least 25 3-point attempts. South Alabama scores 41 percent of their 73 points per game from 3 point range, shooting 38 percent from long range. Guards Mychal Ammons and Antoine Allen each average about 10 points per game and both are shooting over 40 percent from 3-point range. Since South Alabama is a smaller team, I don't know how much man to man the Aggies will play, but they have been doing well defending the 3, holding teams to 34 percent for the year.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jason,
Quick questions. Has Marvin Menzies ever played basketball? What exactly did he do while working under Pitino? Other than Louisville where else has he coached? What do you think of his coaching ability?

Jason Groves said...

Tough question. I don't know of his entire playing career, but I know he didn't play college basketball, but he has been in the business of college hoops for over 20 years, although most of it was spent recruiting, which he has carried over into his head coaching career. I guess my opinion of Menzies would be he has improved over the course of seven years as a D I head coach. There are occasionally things during the course of a game where I question things but the same is probably true for every coach. Part of being a good head coach is running a program, and at NMSU that includes more than you may think. How many head coaches have to spend as much time fundraising as all of NMSU's coaches. It's also delegating and I think you have to give Menzies credit for putting a good staff into place. So I think Menzies coaching ability has improved, but at the same time, he has been just about as successful as a coach can be here unless NMSU really invests in the program enough to pay a bigger name if and when Menzies moves on to the next stop

Anonymous said...

Jason, whats your opinion of your writing capabilities?

Jason Groves said...

I think I'm fair to decent with plenty of room for improvement