Preseason Musings: Hazarding a Bold Prediction
Posted by kj on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
Tuesday Links
- The Big Ten Geeks run down MSU’s nonconference schedule. Doing my work for me!
- Seth Davis like us more than Luke Winn and Grant Wahl do. MSU is #12 in SI’s preseason rankings; Davis has us at #5.
- College Hoopsnet has the Spartans at #7 nationally and #1 in the Big Ten. Props for mentioning Austin Thornton.
- Would Tom Izzo beat Bo Ryan in a cage fight? Eternal tie.
- G0EL suggests Miami-Ohio for the 12th Big Ten team. Superb outside-the-box thinking. They’ve actually got the academic chops to make this worth considering.
A Singular Bold Prediction
I find that I do a lot less prognosticating than most college sports bloggers do. Two reasons:
- I’m not very good at it. (If I were good at it, I wouldn’t spend all my Sunday afternoons mumbling about the bad decisions I made regarding my fantasy football lineup.)
- I’m not sure how interesting predictions are to my readers.
Example of the latter: Nearly every prediction I’ve seen about the Big Ten standings for the upcoming basketball season have the 11 teams grouped as follows:
- The Contenders: Michigan State and Purdue
- Can’t Rule Them Out: Wisconsin
- Young But Very Talented: Minnesota and Ohio State
- Leaning Toward NIT: Illinois, Michigan, and Penn State
- Hard to Take Seriously: Indiana, Iowa, Northwestern
Predicting a precise order of finish, then, merely becomes an exercise in sorting the 2-3 teams in each group. And I’ m not sure my guesses are better than anyone else’s. This’ll be a more interesting exercise once we have some data on nonconference performance.
Similarly, just about every preseason all-conference teams I’ve seen includes 5 of these 8 players: Manny Harris, Robbie Hummel, Marcus Landry, Kalin Lucas, E’Twaun Moore, Raymar Morgan, B.J. Mullens. All solid picks. I have a hard time eliminating three names from that list.
So I must force myself to make at least one bold prediction about the upcoming season. I worry they’ll pull my sports blogger union card if I don’t. Here it is:
Kalin Lucas will be the Big Ten Player of the Year.
The popular preseason picks for this honor are Hummel and Morgan. And you can make a reasonable argument for both. My inclination is to think that there’s less room for either of those guys to improve on their performances from last year (at least statistically) than there is for Lucas, though.
Hummel was so darn efficient last year: .447 3-point %, 10.5% OReb %. He could have a very good season this year and not match those numbers. So the percentage of his team’s possessions he uses would really have to go up dramatically, which seems unlikely given Purdue’s balance on offense, to improve significantly on the 11.5 points and 6.1 rebounds per game he posted last year.
As for Morgan, we all hope he’ll be a more consistent outside shooter, which should boost his scoring production from the 14.0 points/game he scored last season. But he may also lose some scoring opportunities to Delvon Roe and Durrell Summers.
Lucas, meanwhile, should see substantial increases in his numbers. MSU’s commitment to push the ball on offense, along with Lucas’ new role as the clear #1 point guard, should boost his assists/game number from last year’s 3.8. There’s room for his shooting percentages to rise from the .445/.364/.768 numbers he posted last season, and he’ll have even more oppotunities to score in the half-court offense as the go-to guy with the shot clock running down. Both those factors should boost his scoring from 10.3 points/game.
Caveat: No one know exactly how good B.J. Mullens will be. If he’s really in the same class as Greg Oden, he could put up huge numbers for an Ohio State team that doesn’t return a double-digit scorer, playing against conference oppnents who generally lack the sort of big men it will take to defend him.
So there you go: a bold prediction. If I’m right, that should be a very good thing for MSU, indicating the up-tempo thing worked. If I’m wrong, let’s hope that means Raymar Morgan became the big-time 18-points-per-game scorer we’ve seen glimpses of.
« « LSSU Game Recap (11/10/08) | Back on line » »
Filed in links, predictions9 responses so far
9 Responses to “Preseason Musings: Hazarding a Bold Prediction”
Andrewon 11 Nov 2008 at 5:32 pm 1Any thoughts on Vegas having Ohio State at lower odds than Michigan State and Purdue for the National Championship? Everything I’ve seen has MSU/Purdue as 1 and 2 in the conference, so it seems unusual that OSU is more of a favorite to win it all. Do you think this is based on reality or it is it a combination of the hype surrounding their last few recruiting classes and the money pushing the odds in that direction?
kjon 12 Nov 2008 at 7:32 am 2I’m not sure about that one, Andrew. The early trading on Tradesports.com gives MSU the best odds of winning the NC out of the Big Ten.
Andrewon 12 Nov 2008 at 7:44 am 3KJ, it seems like an odd enough bet that I’m sure some sites have it differently. USA Today (I’m assuming they were Saigrin’s odds) and sportsinteraction.com have similar lines, both with OSU around 18:1, followed by Purdue and Michigan State.
The fact that tradesports has MSU with the lowest odds does restore some of my faith in the gambling world!
gb gibberson 13 Nov 2008 at 9:51 pm 4hey man, I’ve checked out your blog a few times now and you’re doing a great job, I enjoy it – keep on keeping on…I look forward to Lucas showing the nation how good he is, it seems like he’s a little under the radar nationally…I haven’t seen much of Roe but even if he still needs another year to regain his explosiveness, it sounds like he has a well rounded game with a high basketball IQ so he could still be a solid player, to play with a bunch of other pretty good players…Bring on the Vandals!!
Spartans Weblog » North Carolina Game Recap (12/3/08)on 04 Dec 2008 at 12:30 pm 5[...] the guy I pegged as the preseason Big Ten Player of the Year struggled mightily. Kalin Lucas finished the night with just 6 points on 2-10 FG shooting [...]
North Carolina Game Recap (12/3/08) | Big 10 Insider - Big Ten Sports Team News, Schedules, Scores & More!on 04 Dec 2008 at 8:00 pm 6[...] the guy I pegged as the preseason Big Ten Player of the Year struggled mightily. Kalin Lucas finished the night with just 6 points on 2-10 FG shooting [...]
Spartans Weblog » What’s wrong with Kalin Lucas?on 19 Dec 2008 at 10:09 am 7[...] shooting numbers have to improve significantly if MSU is to contend for the Big Ten title (and if a certain blogger’s single preseason prediction is to pan out). Raymar Morgan gets most of the attention from the national media as MSU’s [...]
The Spartans would like to thank the Academy | Spartans Weblogon 09 Mar 2009 at 6:41 pm 8[...] a first-team all-conference picks–by both the coaches and the media. Chalk up another rock-solid preseason prediction for the all-knowing, all-seeing Spartans Weblog. (You’ll recall that Lucas didn’t [...]
State of the Blog Address: A-Change-is-a-Comin’ Edition | Spartans Weblogon 10 Mar 2009 at 8:05 pm 9[...] Prediction #2: So I must force myself to make at least one bold prediction about the upcoming season. I worry they’ll pull my sports blogger union card if I don’t. Here it is: [...]