not widely available, I wanted to share my thoughts on the play
Play: Oregon St / Portland St Under 149
To begin with, I freely admit that I may be kicking myself later tonight for backing an under in a game featuring the Beavers’ up-tempo offense vs the Vikings defense ranked #309 in adjusted defensive efficiency. However, I am having a very difficult time seeing where the points are going to come from to get this to the 150 point plateau.
For starters, one would expect to see some regression from last year’s results. In that game, Oregon St shot 59.7% from the field (13-21 from behind the arc) and posted a season high 1.365 points per possession in its 101-68 win. Although the sample is small, both Oregon St and Portland St have seen their offensive efficiency decline and the defensive efficiency improve when compared to last year’s statistics. Furthermore, tonight’s meeting is different since this is the first time in the series history that the Beavers will play the game on the Portland St campus at the Stott Center, and that leads into tonight’s main angles.
First, this is Oregon State’s first “true” road game this season (KU was played in St. Louis). In road games last year, they only averaged 1.011 pts per poss – 0.15 points less than they did at home. In a 71 possession game (what KenPom predicts tonight), that equates to over a 10.5 point difference, which is fairly significant.
Speaking of points per possession, let’s look at the Vikings this year: 0.958, 0.845, 0.866, and 0.848. And tonight, I can’t see things improving. Stealing a page out of some analysis @nropp did back in April (and if you don’t read his blog, you’re doing yourself an injustice), he wrote that teams coming off a 10+ day layoff saw a significant drop in points per possession (less than 0.98 ppp vs average of 1.01). Tonight will be the first time Portland St has laced up their sneakers since December 1 vs LMU – a game which saw them score a season low 56 points.
So getting back to the math, it would be quite surprising to see Portland St score more than 65 points tonight based on expected possessions, season performance, and the long lay-off. That would leave Oregon St with some heavy lifting. However, as mentioned above, the Beavers have shown a drop in efficiency on the road and tonight’s atmosphere won’t be optimum to buck the trend as there is an expected “white-out” in the first sellout at Stott since the 2008-09 season.
And lastly, with Oregon St favored by 12 currently, the chances are small that a close game in the second half will involve an end game fouling situation.
Good
luck to those that decide to make a play
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