Thursday, January 9, 2014

Seattle: Three keys and a prediction

Seattle was supposed to be among the teams to challenge New Mexico State or at least finish second. UMKC beat them at Seattle last weekend, but SU has the leading scorer in the WAC and NMSU will be without Sim Bhullar.

NMSU is still playing very well, very confident and the fact is that Seattle just isn't very good.

Aggies win 85-68

Renaldo Dixon/Chili Nephawe: As long as both NMSU big men stay out of foul trouble, the Aggies will be just fine. Seattle is trying to play a bit bigger with a pair of 6-9 players who get 18 minutes per game. Undersized posts have given trouble to NMSU at times and Deshaun Sunderhaus is an intriguing player who can shoot the 3 at the four off the bench. NMSU should win this matchup. I would like to see the Aggies go inside early to either score or take advantage of double teams and find shooters such as the red hot Kevin Aronis.

Rebounding: Seattle actually leads the WAC in rebounds per game with a slight edge over the Aggies. NMSU seems to have tightened up their rebounding problems with a couple of double digit games on the boards from DK Eldridge.

Give Mullings a challenge: Daniel Mullings likes a challenge and I would imagine the prospect of guarding WAC leading scorer Isiah Umipig (20.2 ppg) is right up Mullings' alley. Umipig has attempted 120 3 point field goals and he's shooting 37 percent. He also sees the ball a lot, coming off ball screens and penetrating. It's a team effort, but I expect Mullings to guard Umipig throughout the game. Jarrell Flora is second on the team with 73 attempts.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lunardi has UMKC as the WAC pick for his latest "Bracketology". Wish they would actually do some research and not simply put whoever is in first place at the time

Jesus

Anonymous said...

Jesus,

Lunardi has better things to do than look at the WAC.

The point of his indifference is the WAC makes no difference in the national picture and whoever goes to the tournament from the WAC will lose 99.9% of the time regardless.

In other words, the WAC is irrelevant.

Happy Friday!

Alan

Unknown said...

Once again, Alan, you show that you're not actually paying attention to the context of the situation.

NMSU was a 12 seed in Lunardi's bracket last week. Every other team from the WAC would be a 16.

In cases like this, where sticking to the "Who's on top of the standings" rule materially changes the exercise, I would see value in continuing to include NMSU as the WAC representative.

Whatever. It's a meaningless exercise in January anyway.

Anonymous said...

Hey Unknown, I would hate to do something surprising and pay attention :-)

You are right...it is a useless exercise in January...

except, I have an agenda!

I am here to try to reset the conversation about what success is, because as you so astutely noticed for those of us not paying attention, every other team in the wac would be a 16th seed.

In other words, winning the WAC is no measure of success!

Thanks for helping me make that point.

The oblivious Alan :-)

Anonymous said...

Lunardi probably doesn't spend too much time on 1 bid leagues. It's probably a default setting in the computer to the 1st place team in the standings. I'm sure Lunardi knows who the favorite in the WAC is.