Preview: Michigan State Spartans vs. Minnesota Golden Gophers
by KJ@theonlycolors on Jan 12, 2010 9:44 PM CST
in Michigan State Spartans Basketball
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Gopher bullets:
- Nonconference record of 9-3. Lost to Portland, Texas A&M, and Miami (Florida). Beat Butler. (All four games away from home.)
- Conference record of 3-1. Beat Penn State and Ohio State at home and Iowa on the road. Lost to Purdue on the road.
- 11 Gopher players are averaging at least 10 minutes per game. (Includes Devron Bostick, who's only played in 7 games.) No player is averaging more than 26 minutes per game.
- Lawrence Westbrook leads team in scoring at 13.6 points per game on a .570/.397/.744 shooting line.
- Blake Hoffarber is averaging 12.2 points per game on a .630/.521/.833 shooting line. Hoffarber has made 16 of 27 three-point attempts in Big Ten play.
- Damian Johnson is averaging 10.7 points per game on a .566/.353/.660 shooting line. He's even more proficient on defense, ranking in top 50 nationally in both block and steal percentages.
- KenPom has the Gophers at #11 in the country, on the strength of the nation's 5th most efficient defense. The team ranks just 70th in adjusted offensive efficiency.
Two teams in the Big Ten rank in the top 20 nationally in defensive turnover percentage. MSU plays each of those teams twice. Tomorrow night's game is the first of those four games. So here goes nothing on the beating-the-turnover-issues thing.
Minnesota ranks 3rd in the nation in both defensive turnover percentage and steal percentage. Six different Gopher players have individual steal percentages of 3.0+, led by Al Nolen at 5.7 and Damion Johnson at 5.1 (i.e., if both those guys are on the floor, one of them will steal the ball every 10th time the opposition comes down the floor). Given Minnesota's depth, they'll be able to keep the pressure on MSU for 40 minutes if the Spartans don't show they can beat it for easy buckets.
Minnesota has a record of 9-1 when they force their opponent to turn the ball over on at least 25 percent of its possessions--vs. a record of 3-3 when they don't. The good news? MSU turned the ball over on only 19.2% and 23.0% of possesions in its two match-ups with Minnesota last season, so Tom Izzo presumably has a decent game plan against Tubby Smith's trapping full-court pressure. It's just a matter of executing it.
Beyond minimizing turnovers, MSU will need to crash the glass and attack the basket to get to the free throw line, taking advantage of Minnesota's two four-factor weaknesses. The attacking the basket part will be a little tricky, though, as two legitimate shot-blocking threats in Damian Johnson and Ralph Sampson III (who's coming back from an ankle injury). Raymar Morgan, Draymond Green, and Delvon Roe will need to pick their spots to attack the basket in the halfcourt offense. (You'll recall that Morgan had a solid game despite shooting just 4-11 vs. the Gophers in the one regular season match-up he was healthy for last season: 10 rebounds and zero turnovers.)
Minnesota also allows/forces opponents to take quite a few 3-pointers, so a continuation of MSU's recent shooting proficiency from beyond the arc (.350+ in 8 of the last 9 games) would be helpful. Can Chris Allen (11-19 from 3-point range in his last 5 games) keep it going?
Offensively, Minnesota lacks a go-to offensive leader. Lawrence Westbrook has shot the ball very efficiently, but doesn't contribute much else (1.7 assists and 0.3 offensive rebounds per game). Damian Johnson has been the most versatile Gopher offensively, but isn't the kind of player that's going create his own shot most of the time. The key is to avoid defensive lapses leading to easy baskets (or open Blake Hoffarber 3-point looks) and force Minnesota to make contested shots. The Gophers have lost 4 of the 5 games in which they've been held to an effective field goal percentage of 50.0 or below.
KenPom predicts a 74-70 MSU win in a 74-possession game. With Purdue picking up its second conference loss tonight, this game represents a chance for MSU to establish itself as the clear leader through the first quarter of the conference schedule. To do so, the team will have to demonstrate that this season's turnover issues are of the correctable, non-chronic variety (i.e., the 2008 variety rather than the 2007 variety).
P.S. 32 points, 9 rebounds, and 3 assists for Evan Turner in his third game back from a fairly serious back injury. Barring a reinjury, I'm going to say that the Big Ten front office can go ahead and send the Player of the Year trophy out to be engraved right now.
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Yes they do
They have a new court, but it remains raised up like the old one.
by JadeMonkey23 on Jan 13, 2010 9:22 AM CST up reply actions
Hoffarber numbers are sic
I remember watching him as a freshman and thinking he was not a Big Ten caliber player. Izzo’s teams always match up well against Tubby. Hope it continues and we can put the pressure on the other teams to play catch up. It was funny reading the Hammer and Rails game thread last night. They were engraving the Player of the Year trophy to Mr. Hummel at halftime. Player of the Year race is far from over.
Dude scored 29 freaking points by halftime
Under those circumstances, I don’t exactly blame Purdue fans for that chatter.
PP-TPW.
The Only Colors
No doubt that was an impressive half..
But in 20 minutes we saw the BT POY go from Hummel to Turner. Lots of basketball to be played.
by Chris in Kzoo on Jan 13, 2010 12:05 PM CST up reply actions
Turnovers
A couple of observations on this nettlesome topic. Yes, they’re aggravating, largely, I think, because it seems like they should be correctible with discipline and practice. Poor free throw shooting can cause the same kind of angst. BUT, turnover percentage is just one of the four factors and, as we have seen this year, if you’re good enough in the other three you can overcome the one. MSU has played 7 games where we were on the bad side of 21% (the median for Division I) and went 5-2. That includes the losses to Texas and Florida but wins over Gonzaga and Wisconsin. And, of course, we were under 15% against UNC and still fell short. Frankly, I wouldn’t want to see us make any drastic changes to address the turnover issue. My feeling is that if we can keep it around 20% or less, and keep doing what we do on the glass and shooting inside the arc, we’ll be in excellent shape. Perhaps the coaches could focus on aspects of the turnover problem that are more easily correctible – offensive fouls, bad entry passes, personnel combinations, offensive sets that should be junked – it would take some film study to decide this.
Secondly, I’m not sure that our turnover problem correlates all that well with the kind of defense we’re facing. We thumped UT-Arlington, Northwestern and FGCU, who all turn opponents over at 22.5% or greater, but had turnover meltdowns against Gonzaga, Wisconsin and Iowa, who are all below average in that category. So I’d have to say I’m as worried about Minnesota’s opposition eFG % of 44.2 and Blake Hoffarber’s 52% 3-point shooting as I am about their causing turnovers. In fact, if Izzo and company has them prepared, as they were against Northwestern but not against Florida, I think a trapping/pressing defense can play right into our hands.
by Con-T on Jan 13, 2010 12:48 PM CST via mobile reply actions 1 recs
I think part of what is maddening
is that we often have turnover problems against teams you would not expect us to struggle against. We did not play well against Florida this year, but in the Izzo era we have handled presses well. What gives us fits is teams that heavily pressure ball handlers on the perimeter and teams overplaying passing lanes in the half court. Thus we struggle against Purdue and (uncharacteristic for most teams) Wisconsin but can beat pressing teams pretty easily (at least historically, who knows what will happen tonight).
I think it has to be the offensive system that is the culprit at this point. The turnover issues have been a problem through several different playing groups. When guys come and go but the issues remain, it’s either the system that is at fault, or the coach just does not know how to fix the problem.
I concede your point that we are very efficient despite the turnovers. The question is, can we keep everything else that is good about this offense and control the turnovers, or would we give up something (effective field goal shooting or rebounding) if we fix the turnover problem? If it’s the latter then we may be best off living with the turnover issues because giving up too much in other areas to fix them might lead to a net loss in efficiency. If the former, Izzo needs to hire an assistant who knows how to coach taking care of the ball, because for all his merits he has not demonstrated an ability to solve this particular problem on his own.
by TheCrestedHelm on Jan 13, 2010 1:55 PM CST up reply actions
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