Stopping Brackins

After a day of cooling down, I think in hindsight I took a fairly harsh tone in yesterday's post. Altogether, I think this team is going to be absolutely unpredictable due to the fact that there's just so little experience out there. We're going to learn some lessons the hard way, and in some cases, the painful way. After getting run out of the gym on Saturday, would you really be shocked if we turned around and beat ISU tomorrow night? I wouldn't, and it might just be that kind of a team we have here.

Given the knowledge of ISU in the Central Iowa area, I don't think a "five questions" post is going to really serve to be of much value, since many know ISU's team even better than I do.

Instead, my focus is on trying to gauge how Craig Brackins did throughout the season last year, particularly in an attempt to understand what kind of strategy should be enacted to prevent him from putting the same type of hurting on us that Robert Glenn did last weekend.

I focused on last years' numbers since they were so readily available, and I found a few interesting things:

Upon attempting to perform a regression on a few characteristics, I found that neither opposing team's height (in inches) nor opposing team's experience (in years) were statistically relevant when trying to predict Craig Brackins' poorest scoring games. With an R-square of 0.048, you could basically say that there was virtually no statistical relation between Craig Brackins' scoring games and shorter teams or inexperienced teams.

I was especially curious (and fearful) about this because we don't have a lot of experience in the front court, or overall for that matter. Some looking through the individual game results validated this observation -- it's not as simple as having a tall team and experience.

The next thing that jumped out at me was that Brackins seemed to struggle in games which he didn't get a bunch of shots. That's kind of a no brainer when you're trying to figure out how to stop a scorer, but it really got me thinking...

If you isolate the seven games last year where Craig Brackins got 12 or less shots, here was his line:

9.9 PPG, 6.6 RPG, 31-83 FG (0.373 shooting)

Compare this to games where he gets 13 or more shots:

23.6 PPG, 10.4 RPG, 212-429 FG (0.494 shooting)

That's obviously a lot more games and experience, but I think it does show that the guy really seems to ramp up both offensively and on the boards when he's heavily involved in the offense. This is likely the case for most players (and most big men especially), but it's really true with Brackins.

What would I do then?

(1) Pack the matchup zone in and deny as many entry passes as possible. Make sure I keep lengthy players in, like Ben Simons who can use those arms to tip passes and create steals (anyone notice his defensive stats from Saturday?).

(2) Make sure we always have at least two of Van Deest/Templeton/Uhlenhopp on the floor as well to quickly double Brackins when he touches the ball.

I know that IUPUI shot lights out against us from the three on Saturday, but I'd honestly prefer to try to take their best player out of the game and make them make jumpshots to beat us. I realize they have plenty of other players that can score, but so be it. Let's step up the press and force some turnovers and at least take away the first option in their offense. Pack that interior once the ball crosses the timeline.

Prediction Time

This is tough. I honestly don't know if Josh Young is playing tomorrow, and even if he is only 80% (my number, not anything factual), I still feel like he is such an asset to have on the court in games like these. We're benefited by the fact that ISU hasn't played a quality opponent yet, and that we're at home. I'm going to assume that JY is not playing in this game, and because of that, I have to put my ridiculous Drake fandom on hold and actually pick against the guys this week. Maybe the karma will help out:

Iowa State 72, Drake 63