All previews: click here for the full 2021 NCAA tournament schedule
Gonzaga Bulldogs
Seed: 1
Record: 26-0
Conference: West Coast
vs.
Norfolk State Spartans
Seed: 16
Record: 17-7
Conference: MEAC
Date: Saturday, March 20
Time: 9:20 pm Eastern
Region: West
Location: Bankers Life Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, IN
Channel: TBS
Norfolk State's strength of schedule is about to get a boost.
Gonzaga Norfolk St.
Power Ratings
Strength: #1 Strength: #228
Pomeroy: #1 Pomeroy: #200
Offense: #1 Offense: #204
Defense: #9 Defense: #219
BPI: #1 BPI: #208
LRMC: #1 LRMC: #171
Other Measures:
Tempo Total/Off: #4/#2 Tempo Total/Off: #221/#199
SOS: #97 SOS: #334
Consistency: #93 Consistency: #166
Str x Consistency: #1 Str x Consistency: #236
2nd half season: #1 2nd half season: #213
Last 6 games: #5 Last 6 games: #163
Road Strength: #1 Road Strength: #235
Injury Modifier: #1 Injury Modifier: #229
That's some kind of agreement—Gonzaga is the consensus #1 team in the land. Strength, Pomeroy, BPI, and LRMC are all in accord for once. The Zags even have the #1 offense in the country, and the #9 defense (it was #10 on Selection Sunday, apparently the results of St. Mary's game nudged it higher). Only two other teams—1-seeds Michigan and Illinois—have both top ten offense and defense.
Gonzaga plays at a super-fast tempo. They've played a pretty tough schedule considering the general weakness of the WCC; their non-conference slate included some big names. They're pretty consistent, too, for having such a high-powered, fast offense; normally that would cause a big spread in performance, but the Zags are pretty steady all things considered (that is how a team goes undefeated, after all).
The Zags have played well all year but dip to #5 in very recent play. Does that put their championship hopes, even their Final Four hopes, at risk? Hardly. It's a small sample effect, but it does reflect the fact that nothing is guaranteed during March Madness.
Norfolk State has the profile of a 16-seed play-in team, particularly their strength of schedule of 334. The good news is that number is about to get a huge bump!
- Wins vs. tournament teams (7): =(3)Kansas+12, =(3)West Virginia+5, =(2)Iowa+11, =(4)Virginia+23, (6)BYU+17, @(6)BYU+11, =(6)BYU+10
- Losses to tournament teams (0): None
- Other losses (0): None
Overview: Gonzaga's season has been the same thing over and over...win, win, and win again. They beat 3-seed Kansas in the opener, 102-90, and edged 4-seed West Virginia 87-82 a week later in what would be their closest game of the season. They handled 2-seed Iowa and 4-seed Virginia more easily, 99-88 and 98-75 respectively. The WCC schedule was just as easy; they picked up three wins over 6-seed BYU, the last of which was a good fight and gave them the WCC crown.
The Zags appeared to be best in a stretch from mid-January to mid-February when they didn't play a game that wasn't stellar. Their "stumble" at the end consists of an 89-75 home win over mediocre Santa Clara and an 86-69 home win over not-great Loyola Marymount. After 22 straight wins can you expect a team to be motivated all the time? In the WCC tournament they beat Saint Mary's 78-55 and were tested by BYU who held an early 14 point lead and later a 9 point lead with under 10 minutes left. The Zags quickly took the lead and pulled away down the stretch, a good gut check for the team.
Gonzaga is lead by 6-7 senior Corey Kispert's 19.2 points; 6-10 Drew Timme's 18.7 points and 7.1 rebounds; and freshman point guard Jalen Suggs' 14.3 points and 4.5 assists. Suggs and Kispert are both potential lottery picks in the draft, with Timme and forward Joel Ayayi (11.8 points, 7.0 rebounds) going somewhere in the first two rounds. This is a loaded team. They're #1 in effective field goal percentage, #1 on 2-point percentage (64%), and play great defense despite running such a fast pace.
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- Wins vs. tournament teams (1): =Appalachian St.+1
- Losses to tournament teams (1): @(13)UNC Greensboro-17
- Other losses (6): Old Dominion-14, UNC Wilmington-8, Morgan St.-4, @Coppin St.-10, @Coppin St.-4, Coppin St.-10
Overview: Norfolk State just couldn't beat Coppin State this year, even with three tries within a 2-week span. They also played 13-seed UNC Greensboro and came up well short; that's as tough as their schedule got this year. Regardless, they look like they're peaking at the right time, with six solid games at the end including their win over Morgan State that put them in the play-in round and the win over Appalachian State that put them in the tournament proper. The short stubby win near the end is a 72-51 win over non-D-I St. Mary's of Maryland; apparently beating them by 21 is very unimpressive.
Norfolk State's leader is Devante Carter, #1 in scoring at 15.5 points and tops in rebounding at 5.3 per game. But he went 1 of 10 against Appalachian State, while #3 scorer Jalen Hawkins came off the bench to hit 8 of 13 for 24 points. That's Norfolk State for you—if they don't hit you one way, it's another.
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Game Analysis: We're not really even going to scout this game, instead we'll just look at Gonzaga's chances to get the Final Four and to win it all. There's been a lot of talk about how undefeated teams don't do well in the tournament, and it's pretty much got everything backwards. Here's how the meme goes: No team since Indiana in 1976 has gone undefeated and won the national title. Indiana State, UNLV, Wichita State, and Kentucky have all entered the tournament undefeated and failed.
Of course three of those four teams reached the Final Four, something incredible hard to do. So the meme should really be: Gonzaga has a 75% chance to reach the Final Four. And Wichita State lost in the Round of 32 to eventual runner-up Kentucky, so the run-down really looks like this:
- Indiana State: Lost to national champion Michigan State
- UNLV: Lost to national champion Duke
- Wichita State: Lost to runner-up Kentucky
- Kentucky: Lost to runner-up Wisconsin
So if Gonzaga is going to lose, it's probably going to be to the eventual champ or the runner-up. And most likely in the Final Four (where that would have to be the case of course). We won't even bother to look at the full history of undefeated teams in the tournament—synopsis: they do very well, and win the national title about 40% of the time—because it goes back so many decades and includes UCLA so it doesn't seem relevant.
The cases of UNLV and Kentucky are relevant since they were as dominant as Gonzaga and they didn't win it, but the situations were different; UNLV was attempting to repeat so the motivation wasn't as high naturally, and Kentucky had finished 2nd the year before and perhaps got overconfident. Gonzaga has no such defects; they're chasing their first national championship as a program. The motivation will be there; the overconfidence is something Mark Few has to deal with.
Vegas Line:
Gonzaga by 34
Power rating: spread
Gonzaga by 31.7
Game-comparisons: % Chance to win
Gonzaga: 98.9%
Norfolk St.: 1.1%
Recent game performance (last 6):
Gonzaga: 97.2%
Norfolk St.: 2.8%
Gonzaga by 23.7
Our game-comparison system gives Norfolk State a 1.1% chance to beat Gonzaga, which is close to the historical percentage of 16-seeds (exactly one) who have upset 1-seeds. Really it's 1 in 140, so 0.7% to be more exact. And due to their stellar recent play that percentage has more than doubled to 2.8%!
There's no line as of right now (update: opened at 34) but it hardly matters; it will be within a few points of the Strength Power rating estimate of 31.7.
Bottom line: It all depends on how motivated the Zags are to take Norfolk State seriously. I think they will, which is bad new for the Spartans.
Final prediction: Gonzaga 90, Norfolk St. 62
More previews: click here for the full 2021 NCAA tournament schedule.
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