HyVee Tournament: Take Two

I'm in Texas finishing up a seminar for a designation I have been working on for years. It's been a great week, but I was away from a computer starting Tuesday until today. I'm not going to go too in depth (i.e. players to watch for) due to the fact that I'm out of town. However, as I look forward to this weekend's games, I have the following thoughts:

vs. South Dakota

• SD is a part of the Great West Conference -- along with Utah Valley, UT-Pan Am, North Dakota, Houston Baptist, NJIT, and Chicago State. I don't think this existed before this year... wonder if they get an automatic bid -- if so that sounds like BS to me.
• Their 5-3 record is rather suspect, with four of those wins coming from non-Division I-A teams.
• Surprisingly, they have struggled with rebounding as well, losing the OR% on the year 20.6% to 35.7%. That looks a lot like the numbers that Drake posted earlier in the year -- allowing mid 30's to the other team and barely touching 20% ourselves. Considering that SD has played four non-D1 schools, I like our chances of getting some rebounds. Would like to see SVD have a big game on the boards.

vs. Binghamton

• Their plight is well known, as they have seen a very rough 2009 due to various sanctions. http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=4504739
• Their suspended coach from that is Kevin "don't call me Calvin" Broadus
• They turn the ball over an astounding 28.2% of the time. Be sure to get that full court press ready, coach.
• The only D-1 team they have beat is Bucknell.

These are some fairly easy games for DU this weekend, but we saw what can happen with the SIU-E game last week. Ideally this is our chance to get to .500 before we go into Iowa City and follow that up with San Diego State. While the Hawkeyes are struggling this year, they're going to give us a tough game -- and San Diego State will surely be a stiff test. We NEED to win these games to right the ship and gain some momentum as we approach the conference schedule.

PREDICTIONS

I haven't had a chance to work through all the numbers, but I predict the following:

• Binghamton gets us into a slow, clunky game. However, we respond and still win 61-51. I don't think that our press is going to force the up and down game that we would like... maybe if this was an experienced team, but I think we all can see that this team has trouble controlling a game at this point.
• I think South Dakota could give us a tough game. While we certainly could be better on the boards, I'm worried that they've already seen enough good teams on the road (Texas Tech, Marquette) that they're going to play focused in the Knapp. It's pivotal we take advantage of their inefficiencies rebounding the basketball, and grind out a victory. Prediction: Drakies win 70-65.

(dutl 2-2 on the season)