Gavin@BuriedTreys
Houston / Illinois (Houston)
The undisputed King of the S16 games with the 4th and 6th best teams in KenPom facing off in a quasi-home game for the Cougs in Houston. Also the most fascinating schematic matchup of the Thurs/Fri games
As I alluded to in a previous post, I can make a decent argument that Illinois may be the single worst matchup, especially offensively, for a Houston defense that has played exceptionally poor for their standards against top competition (3rd best defense falls to 45th vs T25 teams).
If your team possesses any of the following, you are pretty much DOA against the Cougs: Rim reliance, transition reliance, dribble-heavy shot diet, lack of perimeter shooting, poor defensive rebounding, and don't protect the ball offensively
Illinois doesn’t fall into ANY of those categories, and actually, they tend to excel in most of them. This iteration of Illinois plays much slower and is happy to entertain a half court, execution-based game. They’re 15th nationally in 3PRate, Top 10 in allowing turnovers offensively, and are even shooting 35% from the arc (which was their issue last year). They also have 3 different guys who can lead/initiate offense to alleviate some of that up-the-line pressure concerns, as well as being the biggest team in the country and an elite 2-way rebounding frontcourt.
If you can keep Houston off the offensive glass, prevent them from creating live ball turnovers, and force them to play in the half court, you have as good a chance as anybody to beat that physical juggernaut. Illinois has the best 5-out spacing in the country to stress that Houston no-middle overload, in addition to having highly skilled bigs who are above average passers playing out of the short roll, while also having 3 ball handlers
Go back and look at the way Illinois picked apart Nebraska's aggressive post doubles. While obviously a different caliber of athlete b/w Corn and the Cougs, Mirk was slowly backing down with his head swiveled like a Serbian Owl and MAX-baiting the double team in order to spray it crosscourt to an open weakside shooter. Can implement the same gameplan here with the auto Houston Monster double team on post-ups.
The Illini don’t possess as many advantages defensively as Houston is more than willing to jack a ton of the contested, midrange jumpers that Illinois’ drop coverage will inevitably funnel them into. Which means A LOT of Houston’s offense will come down to Flemings/Uzan/Sharp midrange shotmaking. The efficiency fall-off for Flemings down the stretch of the season wasn’t as stark as I was expecting (only a couple % difference in true shooting), and if you look at his KP page, you’ll actually see the usage tick up against Tier A/B competition and again vs Tier A. Which means he's probably the single most important piece of Houston's offense in this game and could have the upside to score upwards of 25+. He just has to hit his shots.
One of my issues with Illinois comes down to Underwood himself. While I certainly commend his adaptable scheme changes year-to-year, he has also not been a very good in-game manager at times, so what happens if they come out with the wrong gameplan akin to 'let's challenge Clingan early' (we saw how that went). That lack of in-game X's & O's management means Houston has the potential to jump on them early and never let up. I think Houston is also much more capable to mount a comeback with their style of play should Illinois get up early.
Illinois is also 348th in Paper Tiger and both teams are outside the T300 in results consistency per Haslam, so that makes things a bit tougher to gauge. There aren't any drastic fall-offs with Illinois' analytics against top tiers but the rebounding numbers aren't quiteee as elite. In 13 games vs T25 teams, opponents shot 34.4% from 3 compared to 31% (35th nationally)
Best guess is the venue location means Cougs take money for the majority of the next couple days, which is when I'll probably look to play back on Illinois. This won't be as hostile of an environment as Mackey or Breslin were, but Illinois did have a very soft road schedule in B10 play. Columbus was the toughest place they played at other than those 2 as well as Pinnacle Bank in Lincoln.
FWIW, Houston is also the type of team where even the greatest schematic advantages can be tossed to the wind if that defense comes out connected & locked in, so it could all be for naught. I RARELY find myself in the business of stepping in front of Kelvin Sampson, but this does feel like the single best offense left in the tourney to matchup against that vaunted Houston defensive pressure.
One last thing. Yes, Torvik's 'close games' stat can be used as a way to identify late game luck/variance for SOME teams. But when programs consistently win a high % of close games, that is something I tend to buy. Prior to this year, Houston was 21-10 S/U in games decided by 2 possessions or less. This year, what's been our worry with Houston? Amongst other nitpicky stuff is the fact that this is the youngest Cougs team under Sampson I can remember in a while. Houston this year is 3-4 in close games. While obviously a small sample, I also think there is something to Houston being slightly less bulletproof in close games this year.
Looking at betting:
>Illinois +points at better number later in week. Points will be worth a lot in this low possession game
>Mirk assists over (likely have to wait til day of)
>Flemings o17.5 points (think alts somewhat in play as well). Wish there was a littleee better scoring floor from the FT line, but Illinois just doesn't foul so you'll need him to get hot on tough shots & likely against Boswell. Not my favorite but his pull-up game is definitely Houston's best path to offense
>Tomi/Mirk over 3Pointers, probably Sharp as well
>Initially thought about an 'efficiency-based' over as both offenses can take advantage of the types of shots the other defenses allow. I'm also not really a totals guy fwiw and if there isn't good shotmaking in this one, we could be staring at a 64-62 game in the low 60's possessions so I'll probably pass on that
