In Reply to: UCLA at Indiana Preview posted by mh on February 13, 2025 at 11:22:16
excellent as always - much appreciated, Mike.
I have some concerns:
1) They are going to out rebound us - question is by how much - if a lot, they win.
2) We are going to win the turnover battle. Question is by how.much. If a lot, could mean we win. (Unless #1 above)
3) You note Cronin has done well defending Ballo in the Pac 12. Why? Because Bona. (He's not here any more.)
- how healthy will Mara be? He will be shrugged aside by Ballo but will he be healthy enough to resist?
- how healthy will Bilodeau be? Will he have recovered and be closer to 100% for this game (Cronin estimated he was about 80% against Illinois)
- Players revert to the norm sooner or later. Have a cold game, you figure to do better in future games. Have a red hot game (5-7 from three point range qualifies for this) you tend to regress back to your norm. This is really important in view of Indiana getting a win @ MSU by packing it inside and daring them to shoot the three. If they try that against us tomorrow night, will we be the UCLA team that hits 4 out of 25 tries or the one that shoots 56% from outside?
Bottom line - they are going to line up like a pro football team and run the tush push against us - Ballo in the lead and the others pounding along right behind him. We are not built to counter that. Mara is crazy tall and really thin (and still young); Kyle is somewhat tall but he's a high jumper by background and he's built like one. Bilodeau is more solid but not like Ballo and much shorter than Ballo. Dailey has been in a funk his last three games and done very little. And Ballo will shove him aside also.
It's a huge disadvantage. So is playing on the road in the B1G.
i want to be wrong about this.
i want us to score the upset (what i would view as an upset and we'll see what Vegas thinks closer to game time). i want us to beat the tar out of them. i will be purely delighted if we can do that.
But really i'm just hoping for the best.
(did i mention that with the single exception of the 6'3" Rice we should be quicker than the rest on the perimeter but they will have multiple inches to look over the top of our guards (except for Kobe Johnson who is their size) and to rebound over our guards as well? Hope someone will be able to stay in front of Rice and we will be able to take advantage of our other guards' quickness - should enable us to get some nice looks at mid-range pull up jumpers - we will badly need for Andrews and Clark to be hot.