All previews: click here for the full 2015 NCAA tournament schedule
Louisville Cardinals
Seed: 4
Record: 25-8
Conference: ACC
vs.
Northern Iowa Panthers
Seed: 5
Record: 31-3
Conference: Missouri Valley
Date: Sunday, March 22
Time: 9:40 pm Eastern
Location: Seattle, WA
Region: East
Channel: TBS
Traditional power Louisville takes on mid-major upstart Northern Iowa.
Louisville Northern Iowa
SportsRatings Power Ratings
Strength: #16 Strength: #30
Median play: #16 Median play: #45
Road/Neutral Rank: #11 Road/Neutral Rank: #21
Other Power Ratings
Sagarin(predictor):#16 Sagarin: #24
Pomeroy: #21 Pomeroy: #12
Offense: #105 Offense: #15
Defense: #5 Defense: #16
LRMC: #20 LRMC: #18
BPI: #16 BPI: #12
Power Rating Derivatives
2nd half/season: #22 2nd half/season: #26
Last 6 games: #24 Last 6 games: #38
Injury correction: #29 Injury correction: #34
Consistency: #138 Consistency: #36
Deep Run Rank: #9 Deep Run Rank: #18
Best Shot: #20 Best Shot: #45
Schedule Strength: #27 Schedule Strength: #138
Our Strength power rating has Louisville as the better team, as does Sagarin's predictor. But Pomeroy makes the Panthers a favorite—#12 to #21, and the LRMC and BPI agree though it's closer. One thing is for sure: Louisville has a better defense and UNI a better offense, and UNI has balance between the two while the Cardinals win with D pretty exclusively. Louisville hasn't been as good without guard Chris Jones and that puts the teams near the same level even in Strength.
- Wins vs. tournament teams (5): Ohio St.+9, =Indiana+20, North Carolina+OT, Virginia+2, =UC Irvine+2
- Losses to tournament teams (7): Kentucky-8, @North Carolina-1, Duke-11, @Virginia-5, North Carolina St.-9, Notre Dame-12, @North Carolina-10
- Other losses (1): @Syracuse-10
Key Info: Three-fourths of the way into the season Louisville was a very good, very consistent team, the kind that goes deep into the NCAA tournament. Then they played their worst game of the season in a loss to NC State, and then 3rd leading scorer Chris Jones was suspended. He returned briefly but missed the last 5 games, and since the disruption Louisville has turned erratic. They're still good enough to beat most teams even on a bad day, led by Terry Rozier's 17.1 ppg.
Louisville struggled to beat UC Irvine but Wayne Blackshear's 19 points helped get the job done.
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- Wins vs. tournament teams (5): @Stephen F. Austin+OT, North Florida+17, =Iowa+12, Wichita St.+16, =Wyoming+17
- Losses to tournament teams (2): @VCU-OT, @Wichita St.-14
- Other losses (1): @Evansville-3
Key Info: It's easy to sum up Northern Iowa's season. They needed overtime to beat 12-seed S.F. Austin on the road, they beat 16-seed North Florida handily, and trounced 7-seed Iowa on a neutral court, coming back from a big 1st half deficit. They split with 7-seed Wichita State in two lopsided games. They were upset by lowly Evansville. And, in addition, they had wins—lots and lots of wins. But almost all of them came against competition that wasn't at their level. Other than Richmond, and Illinois State twice, none of them were notable. Still, it's a sign of quality to consistently beat the teams you're supposed to beat. The Panthers are a low tempo (348 out of 351) team, so their game stats match; therefore it's even more impressive that 6-8 senior Seth Tuttle averages 15.3 points and 6.8 rebounds per game, the equivalent of 17 and 7.5 on a normal-pace team. Both of his numbers are basically double the next player in line, but seven more players average between 5.0 and 7.7 ppg.
UNI had little trouble against Wyoming, holding off the Cowboy comeback thanks to reserve Paul Jesperson, who led with 16 points. He's the 6th-leading scorer on the team.
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Game Analysis: Louisville both got worse and became unpredictable around the time of Chris Jones' suspension, two things you don't want to have happen going into the Big Dance. It affects their level of play enough that they are pretty much comparable to Northern Iowa—if they weren't before. Some measures already have UNI as the better team, regardless of Jones' absence.
People think of Louisville as a major basketball program and Northern Iowa as a mid-major, and in general that's true. Louisville has played a much tougher schedule as part of the ACC than UNI has in the Missouri Valley. But what's interesting is that the teams have exactly the same number of wins—5—over the tournament field. Louisville is 5-7 against the field while UNI is 5-2. Both have one loss outside the field.
Northern Iowa's pace is slow, much slower than UC Irvine's. The Anteaters were able to hang with Louisville in a low-scoring game; how will the Cardinals do against a really good team that plays a slow pace?
Vegas Line:
Northern Iowa by 2 1/2
Power rating: spread
Louisville by 3.9
Game-comparisons: % Chance to win
Louisville: 62.0%
Northern Iowa: 38.0%
The line started out very even but has moved toward Northern Iowa strongly. The Panthers' recent performance has been better and Jones' absence has been notable, and bettors are picking up on this. The Strength power rating—using the full-season—has the Cardinals a slim favorite.
Bottom line: We think the oddsmakers/betting public are right here. Looking at the past several games Louisville is not doing well while UNI is coasting.
Final prediction: Northern Iowa 62, Louisville 54
More previews: click here for the full 2015 NCAA tournament schedule.
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