" title="Spartans Weblog">Spartans Weblog

7:00 Saturday night at the Breslin Center. Big Ten Network.
Quick hits:

The Jacksonville Dolphins come in at 3-2 this season; they’ve lost their last two games–vs. UAB and Georgia St.
They finished 3rd in the Atlantic Sun Conference last season with an 11-7 record (15-14 overall).
They have high turnover percentages on both offense (26.2%) and defense [...]

While my posting of statistical data won’t be as comprehensive as the Big Ten Wonk’s was in his heyday, I do hope to make some statistics available on a fairly regular basis. Most of those statistics will be limited to the MSU team. I want to spend some time looking at team/player data across the [...]

So we’re a week into this endeavor. And I’ve been blogging considerably more than I thought I would be. This is turning out to be quite enjoyable, but also more time-consuming than I anticipated. So I’m going to take tonight off.
But in the interest of making this a learning experience, I’d love [...]

MSU beats the Wolfpack 81-58 in a game that, despite the 23-point margin, wasn’t as close as the score indicates. MSU led the game 29-9 with 5 minutes left in the first half. Official box score here. MSU was efficient in all areas of the game:

On offense, they put up a solid [...]

7:00 tonight at the Breslin Center.  ESPN.  Dave O’Brien and Steve Lavin (my favorite color guy) are the announcers.
A few tempo-free quick hits from the NC State stat sheet:

Good news: NC State hasn’t forced a lot of turnovers.  Their opponents have given the ball up on only 14.7% of their possessions.  Hopefully, MSU can hold [...]

Ken Pomeroy (formerly of kenpom.com) has an article up at Basketball Prospectus sizing up the top candidates for the Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award, which apparently (this is all news to me) is given each year to the nation’s top senior player who’s 6′0″ or shorter. Drew Neitzel is #2 on his list, behind [...]

Joe Rexrode of the LSJ notes that MSU’s nonconference strength-of-schedule appears to be on the upswing, with BYU’s upset over Louisville and near-upset over UNC, Texas’ victory over Tennessee, and NC State’s win over Villanova.
Izzo is, of course, known for scheduling tough nonconference opponents to try to prepare his team for the Big Dance.  My [...]