Leatherneck Nation

Sports Chat Place has Saint Thomas as a 7.5 point favorite in tonight's game.
https://sportschatplace.com/college-bas ... s-2-18-23/
 
 

Both teams have done well in conference play when it comes down to getting to the charity stripe
at the rate of about 19 per game.
They are making about 79% of them, we are at 70%.
Do what Jack Margenthaler teams did and shoot for that magic 80+ % threshold this game and every game.
Need this game to keep a chance at #3 seed in tournament.

The Neural Net Predictor is AWOL today thanks to the NCAA excluding St. Thomas stats from their ranking system
while they under reclassification to D1 status:

{
  Game: 'Matchup',
  team1: { id: 'Western Ill.', score: 'N/A' },
  team2: { id: 'St. Thomas (MN)', score: 'N/A' },
  Note: 'Team 1 assumed to be visitor team'
}

 
 

Avoid giving up easy layups and make this be forced to shoot. Eliminate the bunnies and we should have a good chance to keep it close on the road.

Big difference I see so fare is they play in your face defense, we play softer giving them good looks from deep and they not missing too many.

the one lull at the end of 1st half is all it took to put us behind the 8 ball.  That 14 point run by the Tommies was the essentially the ball game.
 

Saint Thomas won the game 82-69.

Saint Thomas turned the game around with an 19-2 run.

Quinlan Bennett led the Western scoring with 20 points.  He also had 12 rebounds.  Trenton Massner had 15 points and 8 assists.  Alec Rosner had 12 points.  Jesiah West had 11 points and 14 rebounds.

Attendance at Saint Thomas = 1,674

Next game will be on Thursday (Feb 23) at North Dakota.  Game time is 11:00 AM.

Current Summit League Standings:
Oral Roberts  16-0
South Dakota State  12-4
Saint Thomas  9-7
North Dakota State  9-7
Western  8-8
UMKC  7-9
South Dakota  6-10
Denver  5-12
North Dakota  5-11
Omaha  4-13
 

After the dust settles this week, we will likely be facing either NDSU or St. Thomas in one of the Sunday nite games in Sioux Falls.  I think I would prefer St. Thomas but not a lot of difference between the two.  We have wins at home against both this year.  We just have to figure out a way to play a full 40 minutes of basketball at a very high level against whoever it is.