American Army Bucknell Colgate Holy Cross Lafayette Lehigh Navy

Premium
The Wire
Recruiting
Alumni
Username Post: Game One: Army        (Topic#7276)
LU65 
Sophomore
Posts: 133

Reg: 07-30-06
03-05-08 12:26 PM - Post#45534    

Game Notes are up!

http://www.lehighsports.com/assets/sports/mbball/ G...


It's here: Wednesday, March 5th. Three wins and someone is going to the Big Dance. In this most crazy of seasons, why not us? The only thing for certain at this moment in time is that the ESPN2 crew set to broadcast the PL Championship Game on Friday afternoon, March 14th, will not be headed to The Hart Center, home of 8th seeded Crusaders of Holy Cross. All other venues are in the running, even dear ol' Stabler.

For those who like statistics, here's RPIforecast.com take on the probabilities for winning the tournament:

American 39.06%
Navy 16.11%
Colgate 15.22%
Holy Cross 8.57%
Lehigh 8.41%
Lafayette 6.51%
Bucknell 4.47%
Army 1.65%


Here are some more numbers (PL Games only) to digest. You pick the winner.

Scoring Offense
LU 60.4
Army 56.0

Scoring Defense
LU 58.9
Army 53.7

FG%
LU .391
Army .420

3FG%
LU .313
Army .271

3FG% Defense
LU .398
Army .329

FT%
LU .728
Army .660

Rebounding Margin
LU -2.5
Army -5.4

Turn Overs
Lu 13.8
Army 14.7

Top 3 Scorers
LU Hall 15.8 Carrington 13.3 White 9.6
Army Brown 16.9 Cleveland 8.7 Miller 7.8

Top 3 Point% Shooter
LU Hall .397
Army Brown .319

Top Assist Man
LU Hall 3.86
Army Miller 3.00

Top Rebounder
LU White 8.4
Army Williams 5.6

RIP
LU 221
Army 228

Sagain Rating (LU is rated a 5.5 point favorite)
LU 238
Army 262

So how do we advance to the semi-finals on Sunday? Simple: Do what we have done twice before this year - BEAT ARMY!

Each team seems to be peeking at the right time, entering tonight's contest on two game winning streaks and featuring tenacious defenses. What then are the differences, besides the minute variances in the numbers above? What can we expect to see tonight? I say: more of the same. I doubt either club will vary its approach from the ones that got them to this point. That is, a slow and methodical half-court game (each tossing up 48-50 shots) with Lehigh first looking to get the ball inside to White and Carrington while Army's first option will be to get Brown or Cleveland on a roll. Everyone knows about Jarell Brown, but the 6'4" Richard Cleveland scares me. He shot the ball with authority his last time into Stabler, scoring 19 in 33 minutes of play. Focused attention on Brown may leave Cleveland too open and spell trouble for the Mountain Hawks. On the Lehigh side, Zahir Carrington must be dying to get this game underway, having scored 35 points in the two previous Army matches on a combined 14 for 19 shooting spree. Another thing that sticks out in Lehigh's favor would be the emergence of Marquis Hall who seems to thrive on big games. Were he to hit his first three, others seem to follow. And, should the game be close, there's no better man to have at the line in pressure situations with a free throw hit rate in excess of .800. You might wish to throw Bryan White into the discussion when speaking of free throws. He merely went 10-10 in the two Army games played to date. I do believe our tri-captain and league rebound leader will be up sky-high for this game and the team doing everything in its power to "win one" for it's senior leader. This year, unlike some in the past for Lehigh, it has seemed to come down to keeping our big guys, White and Carrington, out of foul trouble and on the court. Do that and get 58+ minutes of playing time out of the two while holding the opponent to less than 59 points and it's a win - at least in the vast, vast majority of cases. Keeping Army south of 59 points, while by no means "automatic," seems reasonable when looking at: (1) their road scoring in PL play this year (385 points in 7 contests for a 55 ppg average and only once breaking the 59 barrier) and (2) our home court defensive numbers (416 points in 7 contests for a 59 ppg average and only twice allowing more than 60). Throw in "home court advantage" (we're 11-3 overall and 7-2 in the PL this year), our multiple scoring options (if it's not Keefer, it's Buchberger or it's Small or it's Anderson), and the explosive nature of Marquis Hall, and I like our chances to advance past tonight's game.

Ready to eat my words, if need be, but ready to enjoy PL basketball at the STAR tonight.

LU 65


 
Icon Legend Permissions Topic Options
Report Post

Quote Post

Quick Reply

Print Topic

Email Topic

1084 Views

Copyright © 2004-2007 Basketball U. Terms of Use for our Site and Privacy Policy are applicable to you. All rights reserved.
Basketball U. and its subsidiaries are not affiliated in any way with any NCAA athletic conference or member institution.
FusionBB™ Version 2.1 | ©2003-2007 InteractivePHP, Inc.
Execution time: 0.548 seconds.   Total Queries: 16   Zlib Compression is on.
All times are (GMT -0500) Eastern. Current time is 11:36 AM
Top