Evansville

Evansville is much better than the rest of our buy game opponents. They are #167 on Torvik and are balanced, with top 200 offense and defense. They play fast, and are elite at taking care of the ball and defensive rebounding. They are very poor on the offensive glass though.

Offensively, they don't shoot it well from three but don't attempt many. Stretch 4 Ben Humrichous is the only guy putting up more than a few threes per game, and he has made 50% of his 60 attempts on the season. Almost everyone will shoot it though, despite many players hitting under 30%. They are much better inside the arc, converting 64% at the rim and 42% from midrange. The offense is balanced, as everyone can score. 6'7 point forward Tanner Cuff has by far the highest assist rate, but is a poor shooter who doesn't put up midrange shots.

Defensively, they give up a ton of threes. 42% of opponent field goals come from beyond the arc. But they are a big team that keeps opponents off the offensive glass, so we probably won't be able to count on extra possessions like we are used to.

The key to this game will be guarding their unconventional positions. Evansville's most efficient scorer is a stretch 4, and their best creator is a point forward. If Vik is playing the 4, he needs to be active on the perimeter. Whichever wing is on Cuff will need to go under screens and stay in front. On offense we can look for open threes and try to get to the rim against their bigger perimeter players. We can't be scared of their size and settle for midrange jumpers. Missouri St put up 90 points by making 9 threes, getting to the rim 25 times, and only putting up 11 midrange shots. We should be able to repeat that.

Great breakdown, Sedz.

A few more notes on Evansville:

-Despite playing 6 of their 12 games away from home so far, KenPom has Evansville's non-conference schedule as the 9th weakest in the country.

---They've lost their only Q1 game 96-55 at BYU and their only Q2 game 90-78 at Missouri State. They took roughly 44% of their FG attempts from 3 in both games.

---In the BYU game they shot 33% from the field and 17% from 3 (5-29) while only getting to the free throw line 10 times. They did only turn the ball over 7 times.

---Missouri State shot 32 free throws in their game. No other team has made it to the line more than 21 times against them.

-KenPom also has Evansville rated as the 4th "luckiest" team in the country so far meaning their results have grossly outperformed their metrics.

Interesting points, thanks. Evansville is a tough team to scout, since as you showed they have so many outlier games. It's tough to tell what kind of team they will be against us.

-17.5

Rumors floating about (although still unconfirmed) that Evansville's leading scorer, Ben Humrichous, will be out tonight due to injury.

That would be a major loss for them. Humrichous isn't an inefficient, high volume guy whose production could be easily replaced like some leading scorers. He's their only real perimeter threat.

Jamille, Vik, and Simas on the court together is a very slow lineup. Not a fan of this.

Newman isn't big enough to guard Cuff. We need Skillings or a big on him. He's not a shooting threat.

Much better results with only one big on the floor. We completely shut them down with our athleticism and were able to spread the floor with shooters.

We made 12 threes, got to the rim 31 times, and only attempted 9 midrange shots. Exactly what I was looking for. We also rebounded 43% of our misses against a very good defensive rebounding team. We ran into trouble at the rim, only converting 30% there, but the gameplan was great.

Defensively we were outstanding after going away from the two big lineup in the second half, and after putting Skillings on Cuff and Newman on Toumi. Those were two important adjustments that really turned things around. We held Cuff to just one assist and 3 turnovers. Evansville had more midrange shots than rim looks.

It was nice to see Reed contribute solid minutes. He showed rebounding, shooting, and ball handling ability at the 4 spot.

Great effort by Day Day on both ends of the floor despite the poor shooting night.

10 points, 7 assists, 6 boards, 4 steals, and 2 blocks is a crazy line for a 6'1 point guard.

Simas is 12/20 (60%) from 3 over his last 4 games.

On the contrary, Vik hasn't made a 3 since the Xavier game and is 1-15 from deep over the last 6 games.