Big Ten Round-Up
Posted by kj on Friday, March 21st, 2008
Wisconsin pulled away from Cal State Fullerton to to win 71-56. The Badgers used their size advantage to dominate on the glass on both ends of the court. 18 for 38 on offensive rebounding chances (47.4%). 32 for 39 on defensive rebounding opportunities (82.1%). Uncharacteristically, the Badgers turned it over 17 times in 71 possessions (23.9%), indicating they can play a bit sloppily if forced into a more up-tempo game. Badgercentric offers his perspectives on the game; he says Krabbenhoft was player of the game for hitting some shots early to keep Fullerton from pulling ahead. #11 seed Kansas State is up next, coming off their upset of #6 seed USC.
Purdue ran by Baylor, 90-79, in a very un-Big-Ten-like 74-possession game. Eight players scored at least 8 points for the Boilermakers, who shot 9-20 from three-point range (45.0%). Off the Tracks didn’t like the 13 turnovers, but a turnover % of 17.6% (13/74) isn’t too shabby. He notes that the Boilermakers let Baylor dictate the tempo and simply beat them at their own game. #3 seed Xavier is up next.
Indiana takes on Arkansas tonight at about 9:45. The Hoosier Report has posted an interesting conversation with Hawg Blog, an Arkansas fan blog. Much of the dialogue focuses on coaching controversies past and present. The Hoosier Report points to Gordon’s shooting slump (8-47 on three-pointers since the win against Purdue) as something that must be corrected for the Hoosiers to advance in NCAA tournament play.
Three wins in three games for the Big Ten so far. If Indiana can pull out a win tonight (which is not the predicted blogger outcome), the conference will be off to a great start in proving we’re not as weak as some national pundits seem to think.
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3 Responses to “Big Ten Round-Up”
Mike Wozon 21 Mar 2008 at 10:03 am 1Noticed something quite interesting. Check the box score for the Georgia-Xavier game. Notice the foul discrepancy. Now notice who had officiated the game. One almost can’t help but notice that when Mr. Hightower officiates, that there is a severe skew to who gets called more. It would be interesting to see a history of games he’s officiated and if this is a common trend.
Danon 21 Mar 2008 at 11:36 am 2I’ve always noticed in the past that Hightower games tend to have a *lot* more fouls, but the difference in number of fouls on each team tends to be explainable for other reasons. I think it has more to do with one team adjusting better than the other to the way the game is called.
That said, I wasn’t watching the Georgia-Xavier game all that closely (I had a more important game on my mind), so I can’t say much about that game.
kjon 21 Mar 2008 at 11:57 am 3According to bbstate.com ($), games involving Hightower have an average of 37 fouls called–which is just 522nd out of 896 officials in the country.
So either he doesn’t actually call that many fouls (could be his overly dramatic calls just make them stick out more) or teams do a good job adjusting to tighter calls early in the game.
He’s called 77 games this season, so a more complete analysis would be time consuming.