Looks like we're 1-point favorites. Which is great until you consider we were favored last year as well and laid a 47-point egg in the biggest game of the season. And we're all painfully aware of the previous meeting this year.
This has been an especially bad matchup for Shaq, who seems to be a glutton for the punishment that Gary Clark and Octavius Ellis dish out under the basket. He's 9/29 in 2 games against Cinci.
We're clearly outmatched down low and it's a fool's errand to drive right at these guys. In my opinion, they're the best team in the country at altering shots without fouling. But they also have a tendency to overpursue, leaving shooters wide open in the corners. We'll need a big bounce-back game from Woodard after that dud in Storrs.
Defensively it's a decent matchup for our zone, but we have to track Farad Cobb, whose 2nd and 3rd highest-scoring games of his career have come against Tulsa. Otherwise, I'm fine letting Caupain, Johnson, and Evans jack it up from deep. That was Temple's attitude and they were rewarded with a 3/20 from those guys.
I've been saying it all week. There's a crack in the door, but we have to bust it down starting tonight.
