By Justin Perri
Ah, the double-bye tournament structure. Such a polarizing topic, should conferences reward their best teams such as the Ohio Valley Conference does, or should leagues invite chaos and have top seeds enter the fray earlier like Big South and the NEC do?
Some believe that the extra byes for the best teams are in the interest of the conference, why rob the group of the best chance to improve everyone’s program with a 8/9 seed beating the 1 in the second round…
On the other side of this debate, it’s March – you gotta win to advance and being battle tested isnt exactly the worst thing for a team come tournament time. And, regardless of your or my opinion on this matter, the double bye is how the OVC is structured and we’re going to dive into what that means based on the final standings, seedings and SQ ratings.
Here are the seedings and their respective SQ D1 ranking:
1. Morehead State (296)
2. Tennessee Tech (289)
3. Tennessee Martin (294)
4. Tennessee State (273)
5. Southeast Missouri (319)
6. SIU Edwardsville (266)
7. Southern Indiana (242)
8. Lindenwood (334)
Surprising to see Southern Indiana be the top rated SQ team, but with an expected record three wins better than their actual, the data is pointing towards a team that probably got a bit unlucky in its first D1 season. Also interesting to note that Lindenwood, the worst team in the conference, by SQ’s understanding, is also making a tournament appearance in their first D1 season.
Morehead won the regular season by 3 games, 14-4 in conference, but SQ rated their play as pretty average amongst their peers. They lead the OVC in negative record luck, and were expected to suffer five more losses than they did based on the shots taken. Fraud alert? Maybe so… Indiana State’s offense certainly could make a run, but that dubious double bye will give the higher seeds a decent advantage.
Important to note that this tournament is being played in Evansville, which might help the 7 seed tonight. USI is on the western side of the city. Little nugget for ya there. Let’s get into the two games on the Ohio Vally card.
5 Southeast Missouri vs 8 Lindenwood
SQ Projects SEMO 79.6 to 72.9
ShotQuality’s projection model agrees with the 7.5 point spread here within a point but is expecting close to 152.5 rather than 148 points, so a solid lean to the Over.
Here’s what to know about Lindenwood; they’re good at defending three point shots, but very bad at defending the rim… 351st in the nation at doing so to be specific. They also defend rim attempts at the 25th highest frequency in the country, so teams know they can go right at the heart of this defense and score. Probably why they’re 334th in our ratings.
Lucky for Lindenwood, SEMO has a low rate of attacking the rim, but thats likely due to how often their drives to the rack result in a trip to the free throw line. Southeast Missouri is 42nd in the nation in FTR, and shoots it from the stripe at a decent 70%. This Redhawks squad does like to run in transition and take catch and shoot threes, the latter of which likely could determine the spread result’s fate.
I posted SEMO -5.5 on twitter last night, which has done quite well, but I WOULDN’T TAKE -7.5. However, I’m also on the OVER 147.5 for this matchup. I think we see some tempo here. Southeast Missouri is one of the fastest teams in the nation and Lindenwood likely will have to try to catch up which could lead to even more SEMO points. And Lindenwood will happily take those threes if they’re losing.
This should be a good game, I like it to be closer to 5.5 than 7.5, and there should be plenty of excitement and scoring until SEMO pulls away in the last ten minutes. Go Redbirds!
6 SIU Edwardsville vs 7 Southern Indiana
SQ Projects USI 74.5 to 73.9
Ooooh!! A projected upset for ShotQuality!! Currently SIUE is a 1.5 point favorite and the total is set at 151.5 points. So SQ leans Under a bit. Now, the 2 point differential between the SQ projection and the line does not warrant an official model play, but this lines up with USI being the top team in SQ on a semi-home court.
Well… I disagree!! I played SIUE -2 last night, and Over 152. I like SIUE because they’re quick, get to the line and hit their shots. Its an important facet in a game that is expected to be tightly contested. Free throws will be the death of your bets if you don’t pay attention to if the teams you wager on can hit them. SIUE can, USI… not so much. A difference of over 6% between these teams in free throw rate. Would not shock me to see that be the difference maker down the stretch, especially with how close the rest of the metrics are between these two.
Southern Indiana has relied on elite shotmaking, rather than shot selection, to score points. They’re 20th in the nation in SQ’s Shot Making stat, which measures a teams reliance to hit tough looks. That’s a bit of a high rate, and could fall flat at any time, but especially in the playoffs. Southern Indiana also has some defensive regression looming, as they’ve been expected to allow 0.04 PPP more this season.
If that defensive regression comes in it should help the Over play as well, but I like the Over because only once has SIUE gone under on a total with a line at 140 or above, 9-1 O/U. The SQ Trend Finder backs it up, as it expected those games to go over at 8-2 xO/U. I think we see some fireworks and this is probably one of the games of the night, so settle in and take the better free throw shooting team and the score to be on the higher side.
Thanks for reading and be on the look out for more previews today and this week, check out the Value Finder for all the model’s plays and sign up to get access to all our Bracket Tools in just a couple weeks.