All previews: click here for the full 2015 NCAA tournament schedule
San Diego State Aztecs
Seed: 8
Record: 26-8
Conference: Mountain West
vs.
St. John's Red Storm
Seed: 9
Record: 21-11
Conference: Big East
Date: Friday, March 20
Time: 9:40 pm Eastern
Location: Charlotte, NC
Region: South
Channel: CBS
There are many clashes of style in this 8 vs. 9 matchup.
San Diego State St. John's
SportsRatings Power Ratings
Strength: #42 Strength: #53
Median play: #35 Median play: #42
Road/Neutral Rank: #37 Road/Neutral Rank: #48
Other Power Ratings
Sagarin(predictor):#35 Sagarin: #46
Pomeroy: #27 Pomeroy: #42
Offense: #161 Offense: #62
Defense: #4 Defense: #51
LRMC: #26 LRMC: #56
BPI: #42 BPI: #51
Power Rating Derivatives
2nd half/season: #43 2nd half/season: #50
Last 6 games: #63 Last 6 games: #62
Injury correction: #33 Injury correction: #52
Consistency: #171 Consistency: #284
Deep Run Rank: #34 Deep Run Rank: #47
Best Shot: #37 Best Shot: #33
Schedule Strength: #93 Schedule Strength: #32
Like many 8-seed vs. 9-seed games, these teams don't rank very far apart. But there is consensus among the ratings that San Diego State is slightly better, anywhere from 9 spots (BPI) to 30 spots (LRMC). Given that, can we read anything into San Diego State's huge efficiency disparity between their offense and defense? Will it make the game harder to win if St. John's can so easily stop them from scoring? Or does their lockdown defense keep the game well under control? Note, too, that over the last 6 games the ranking disparity almost disappears as both teams slipped near the end.
- Wins vs. tournament teams (4): Utah+4, =BYU+OT, @Wyoming+8, Wyoming+26
- Losses to tournament teams (5): =Arizona-2, @Cincinnati-OT, @Boise St.-15, Boise St.-10, =Wyoming-2
- Other losses (3): @Washington-13, @Fresno St.-2, @Colorado St.-6
Key Info: After last year's 31-5 campaign expectations were high for the Aztecs once again, and beating Utah, BYU, and Pitt in the first five games certainly helped them live up to the hype. Losing to Arizona by just 2 points didn't hurt, either. But losses to Washington and Cincinnati made the Aztecs 7-3 in their brutal early schedule, and they lost an early Mountain West game to lowly Fresno State. The rest of the conference season went well but not nearly as dominant as last year, as SDSU fell to Colorado State once and Boise State twice. They beat the Rams in the tournament but were upset by Wyoming 45-43 and settled for an 8-seed after last year's 4. The Aztecs' meager scoring is led by Winston Shepard at 11.1 points per game.
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- Wins vs. tournament teams (5): @Providence+13, Providence+9, @Xavier+8, Xavier+1, Georgetown+11
- Losses to tournament teams (8): Gonzaga-7, Butler-4, Villanova-18, Duke-9, @Butler-23, @Georgetown-22, @Villanova-37, Providence-17
- Other losses (3): @Seton Hall-11, @DePaul-OT, @Creighton-3
Key Info: St. John's season had four main stages. Or rather, we've divided them into 4 stages. In stage 1, the Red Storm went 11-1, losing only to 2-seed Gonzaga. In Stage 2, the Big East season started and St. John's opened 3-6. At 14-8, their NCAA hopes were fading. But in Stage 3 they recovered and went 7-1, including two wins over 6-seed Xavier and one vs. 4-seed Georgetown. But the last two games are a stage of their own; St. John's was destroyed by Villanova 105-68 (with a 43-10 finish), then bowed out of the Big East tourney to Providence, 74-57. The question: are they still in that stage or a new one? The Red Storm get nearly all their scoring—82%—from four guards who average 13+ per game, led by D'Angelo Harrison's 17.5. But the only big man in their main rotation—Chris Obekpa—is suspended for 2 weeks. He was out against Villanova but back for the Providence loss.
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Game Analysis: This might be a good test for the "travel theorem" which states that a team which travels from the Pacific to the Eastern time zone is much less likely to win than a team that stays in its own time zone (it's more than a theorem, it's based on data). According to the study, a team going Pacific to Eastern has just a 39% chance of winning, all other things equal (or, all other things however they happened to be, if they just used every game result).
It's also, as we mentioned, a good time to examine the effect of a "balanced" vs. and "unbalanced" team. In this case, San Diego State is the unbalanced team, with a top 5 efficiency defense and abysmally average offense. We know "defense wins championships" but does bad offense negate that?
Another interesting clash of styles is tempo. San Diego State plays at a very slow pace, with a reasonably slow offense and a defense that forces opponents to hold the ball forever trying to find a shot. St. John's tries to play a quick pace on offense. It's the 40th fastest offense vs. the 351st slowest defense, who will "control the tempo" ?
St. John's is a guard-dominated team, but Obekpa was central to their defense as a shot-blocker; without him they'll again go to an even smaller lineup much of the time. They've played a few other games without him, losing 85-62 to Butler after he was ejected early, but beating Creighton and DePaul.
Vegas Line:
San Diego State by 3
Power rating: spread
San Diego State by 1.1
Game-comparisons: % Chance to win
San Diego State: 51.7%
St. John's: 48.3%
Probably because of St. John's recent play—and Obekpa's absence—the Aztecs are favored by a bit more by the oddsmakers than the Strength power rating. The latter gives them almost 52% odds, which beats the 49% that the 8-seed has historically (9s have gone 61-59 since 1985).
Bottom line: There are a lot of weird factors at play in this game. So instead of being a laboratory to test on or another, there are about 4 or 5 that all comingle and will make the results pointless for further study. We were set to pick St. John's before we looked at their chart and realized they had dropped off the earth in 2 straight games. One game can be explained away, but not two. And then, the suspension of their center leaves them a very short team, and sure, they beat Creighton and DePaul without him but those teams aren't San Diego State. Their own offense won't suffer but it will make it easier for SDSU's lame offense to get on track.
Final prediction: San Diego State 69, St. John's 58
More previews: click here for the full 2015 NCAA tournament schedule.
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