YTD: 2-1
Tonight’s card includes some of the first conference games of the season. With these conference match-ups, we can begin to not only use tempo stats with respect to totals, but also historical trends. And based on these historical trends, I think there is one match-up on tonight’s card that presents some very good hidden value:
Play: Chattanooga / Georgia Southern Over 138.5
To begin with, let’s look at the last 7 match-ups between these teams over the course of the last 3 years (window that any current player would have played in). The over is actually 2-5 in these games. So why the over tonight? Well let’s look at the posted totals in those games. They were: 148.5, 154, 147.5, 151.5, 156, 155, 151 – an average of 151.9 or nearly 13.5 pts more than tonight’s total.
As for the actual results in those match-ups, we saw finals of: 141, 144, 138, 187, 152, 142, 187 – only 1 game of the 7 finished less than tonight’s total, and that was only by a half point.
Has anything changed with respect to their styles? I’d argue no. John Shulman is in his 8th year at Chattanooga and in the last 4 years, his teams have never finished lower than #42 in the country in terms of pace or averaged less than 69.8 possessions per game. Safe to say, they want to play fast. Charltan Young is in his 3rd year at Ga Southern with his teams are playing at an above average 67.3 possessions and 72.1 possessions per game the last two years.
And not only do we have a good baseline for how the coaches want their teams to play with respect to pace, both the coaches actually returned the most experience to their teams during their respective tenures this year; with Chattanooga actually a pre-season conference favorite.
So why the “low” total tonight? It’s two-fold in my opinion. First, Chattanooga has struggled to shoot the ball early only converting 35.4% of their shots. But the Ga Southern defense should be a cure for those shooting woes as they are second worst defense in the country allowing teams to convert 61.9% of their 2PA’s. Furthermore, they allow teams to get to the line very easily – always nice when on an over to get scoring without the clock running.
Secondly, are the recent game results of Ga Southern with totals of 112 vs S Florida and 104 vs SMU. But both these teams rank in the bottom 10 in the country with respect to pace so the results are expected. When they played teams that wanted to get out and run like Chattanooga will tonight, we saw totals of 171 vs Valpo and 153 vs Wake Forest.
Could this go under tonight? Of course, Chattanooga could continue to struggle shooting. However, based on the fact that this game should not see less 70 possessions and both teams are giving up more than 1 pt per possession, I think this is a great situation and match-up for both teams to break out of their offensive struggles.
As always, good luck if you decide to make a play
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