Mich/Penn St predictions

Submitted by goblue85 on

Michigan basketball is back in action tonight at Penn St 630 pm BTN.  Back to a road game in which we have drop three straight road games.  This is a game where we need to take control and leave State College with a win.   Lets use Illinois second half and roll with it.  Morgan should be getting better is the key down the stretch.  I look for Burke to have  a great effort and THJ will come out of his shell.   Is this road game where GR3 will shine?   We start the four game stretch to claim the BIg Ten title.

 

Michigan 73

Penn St 61

Hannibal.

February 27th, 2013 at 10:42 AM ^

Penn State has been making lots of teams look bad lately.  I'm not exactly sure how they are doing it, but I could see this one being pretty unenjoyable to watch.

mGrowOld

February 27th, 2013 at 10:44 AM ^

I think we'll get a pretty good feel for the maturity level of the team tonight.  This is a game they  should win and win fairly comfortably IF they play with intensity from the beginning of the game and not just when they're down 8 points early.   PSU, as bad as they clearly are, plays hard and has come "oh so close" in several games recently.  And trust me, there is nothing they'd like more than to get B1G win #1 at home against us.  And if I was their Head Coach I'd remind the team just how close they came 10 days ago to accomplishing that task at Crisler.

A focused, mature team (even with lots of Freshman) will come out and put their foot to the throat of PSU early and often just like we did at Northwestern, Illinios and Minnesota.  While the big games are still coming up - tonight will tell us a lot about the mental make-up of our team.

Michigan 76 - PSU 64

Soulfire21

February 27th, 2013 at 11:03 AM ^

We need one of our huge-margin road wins (think Northwestern) to really get out mojo.  Would be nice to see a 90+ point effort against the Big Ten's worst team.

LSAClassOf2000

February 27th, 2013 at 11:22 AM ^

Here's the quick summary using stats from conference play:

 

Offense Michigan Penn State
Points/Game 72.1 57.5
Avg Score Margin 8.3 -11.6
Assists/Game 13.4 9.5
Total Rebounds/Gm 33.8 33.7
Effective FG % 54.32% 41.32%
Off Rebound % 30.80% 29.70%
Defense Michigan Penn State
Opp Points/Game 63.9 69.1
Opp Effective FG % 49.36% 49.27%
Off Rebounds/Gm 9.9 10.9
Def Rebounds/Gm 23.9 22.9
Blocks/Game 2.7 3.3
Steals/Game 6.2 4.6

So, I would anticipate something in the 70-60-ish range. Massey is going with a 94% win probability and a 74-58 score based on its algorithm, which is definitely a feasible range too if Morgan continutes to see more minutes and we get some contributions on defense a la the second half of Sunday's game - a few more offensive rebounds like those that Morgan provided in his 17 minutes and that margin gets bigger, I would think.

snarling wolverine

February 27th, 2013 at 1:32 PM ^

I'll take a win, but giving up 73 to these guys would be unsettling.  It took a really bad defensive effort for them to reach 71 in Crisler.  

I think we'll really step it up on that end, especially with Morgan getting healthy.

M 75 

PSU 60

 

Tater

February 27th, 2013 at 11:50 AM ^

I keep waiting for Michigan to blow somebody out, but mediocre teams keep putting out supreme effort.  I'm sure PSU thinks they are going to win this one, considering how close they kept the game in Ann Arbor.  The upside to everybody playing their best agianst Michigan is that the Wolverines have already experienced NCAA Tournament intensity in the Big Ten.

Michigan 69, PSU 59.