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A statistical look at Michigan State basketball, with a dash of football talk

Another bad omen

Posted by kj on Friday, February 8th, 2008

Illinois looked like it might knock IU down a peg in the standings last night.  But free throw shooting once again came back to haunt them, as they lost 83-79 in double OT.

What a game, though.  Clearly the game of the year in the Big Ten.  I’d add “so far,” but I don’t really think anyone will be able to top this one.

I caught just the last five minutes of regulation and the two OTs, but there was plenty of drama built into those 15 minutes:

  • Shaun Pruitt missing 3 separate free throws that could have won the game.  He finished 1-7 from the line.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a player look as unconfident at the line as he did.
  • Eric Gordon banking in a deep three-pointer to send the game to the first OT.
  • Preferred walk-on Jeffrey Jordan (whose Dad used to play some ball up the road in Chicago) playing most of the OTs after Chester Frazier couldn’t go any further on his bad ankle.
  • Eric Gordon getting the MJ treatment by the refs, getting away with a pretty clearly offensive foul and a travel in the OT periods.
  • Jordan Crawford hitting a key 3-pointer in the first OT after the ball was kicked to him by Gordon.

All of this in the context of a crowd that held Gordon in major contempt for backing out of his Illinois verbal commitment.  Even the Illini players were hostile toward him (and over the line, as Jay Bilas pointed out, with Frazier giving him a nonfriendly chest bump during the player introductions).

IU managed to win despite Illinois doing a fantastic job on Gordon.  He finished just 3-13 from the field.  He did make 10 of 12 FT attempts, though, to finish with 19 points.

Freshman Demetri McCamey led the Illini with 31 points on 7-13 3-point shooting.  Coming into the game, McCamey had been shooting just 27.6% from beyond the arc. 

This game is another bad omen for MSU having any shot at the Big Ten championship.  IU has only two road games left against top-tier teams.  Wisconsin also has two top-tier road games, plus a game at Illinois.  Meanwhile, MSU still has to play all of the other top-tier teams on the road plus Illinois.  Would have been nice to at least have evened up with IU in the standings for the moment.

Update:

College Basketball Chronotope has an IU perspective on the game.  He expresses no sympathy for Bruce Weber–but a bit of sympathy for Shaun Pruitt.

Illinitalk has an Illinois perspective on things.   Illinitalk’s mom says, “We can play with anybody, but we can’t beat anybody.”

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Filed in big ten, illinois, indiana

No Responses to “Another bad omen”

  1. Devinon 08 Feb 2008 at 12:47 pm 1

    Hey, thanks for the mention!

    I updated my post to recognize the good post you found at Illini Talk.

    I’d agree that Gordon got away with that walk, but as for the offensive foul I’d just say that there was a *lot* of contact all night long and I don’t blame the refs for not calling everything. Except for the Pruitt foul at the end of the first overtime, I don’t see how they missed that, altho I suppose I’m not unbiased.

    But overall, I’d say IU was more lucky than it was good, but it was a good game to watch and I’m obviously happy they came away with a win.

  2. Spartalyticalon 08 Feb 2008 at 2:00 pm 2

    I see Gordon’s family had some things thrown at them in the stands (ice, water, nothing big, but still). I’m not sure how likely it is these two would meet up a third time in the conference tournament in Indy.

  3. Danon 08 Feb 2008 at 3:20 pm 3

    Devin, they “missed” that because the chances of the referees calling a foul in the backcourt with time winding down in a tie game are zero. If Pruitt had ripped White’s arm off and beaten him over the head with it, you might have gotten the call. Anything less … that’s never going to get called. (And I’m not entirely convinced it was a foul anyway.)

    I’m still fairly optimistic about the Indiana games, though - they don’t have any really good wins (that was their best of the season to date according to Pomeroy, and I think Pomeroy’s system severely overrates Illinois because it treats close wins and losses as a matter of luck; while that’s usually reasonably true, a team that shoots 40-some percent on FTs is going to make a lot of bad luck for themselves in close games), and they haven’t even been particularly close to one (UConn dominated that game, the final score doesn’t really do it justice). If Pruitt can make one out of three FTs, or if Weber yanks Pruitt knowing that Indiana is going to hack him the instant he touches the ball, Illinois probably wins that game.