How Badly Will Wisconsin Basketball Beat Western Illinois?

Things are back on track for Wisconsin Basketball, and anytime you can win an early season tournament with at least one game vs. a P6 opponent, that’s a feather in your cap. Now we look up, and that 2-2 start has turned into 4-2, and we can move a little further away from the ledge some folks were on after Providence.

Our new additions (Storr/Blackwell/Winter), keep taking big steps game after game, and as I said earlier in this season. It’s going to take 5-10 games for them to settle into their roles and we’re getting into the final stretch of that prediction. But with the way AJ Storr played in the 2nd Half of the SMU game, driving off of plus opportunities, not forcing drives, and playing off of two feet ATTACKING the rim is exactly what this offense needs!

Blackwell continues to shine, although his USG has been creeping up, and I don’t necessarily think that’s great for him. Winter made HUGE steps forward on the defensive end in Fort Myers. We’ll need him to take another leap on Monday to be ready for some extremely athletic bigs on Marquette!!

Let’s get into the Analytics & Prediction Model for Western Illinois!!!

Western Illinois Predicted 4-Factors:

1. NoT eFG%: 34.96%
2. DREB%: 72%
3. OREB%: 26%
4. FTAR: 34.3%

Wisconsin Basketball Predicted 4-Factors:

1. NoT eFG%: 42.52%
2. DREB%: 74%
3. OREB%: 28%
4. FTAR: 35.8%

Will Wisconsin Basketball beat Western Illinois?:

Based on my Model, I expect Wisconsin to notch a 13-point Victory. KenPom is pretty much in line, projecting an 83-57 win (26 Points), so a bit more aggressive. I still am not bringing in opponent adjustments (I will as we get into conference play!) into the model. Interestingly, Bart Torvik & Haslametrics align with KenPom’s projections at 82-57 & 83-57, respectively.

As we can see from the Model, we’ve got the edge in each of the Factors:

• Net of Turnover eFG%: +7.56% = ~5 Points of Margin in my Model
• STOP FACTOR: +3.81 Points of Margin
• FT Margin: +2.91 Points!

Wisconsin Basketball STOP FACTOR:

Our STOP FACTOR is coming in at 2.11 given Western Illinois’ poor NoT eFG% (35%) and a relatively strong projected DREB%. With Western Illinois’ poor shooting & strong offensive rebounding this is a strong DREB%. It’s also a recipe for a solid STOP FACTOR (High DREB% & Low NoT eFG%).

Compare that to Western Illinois, which is projected to get a 72% DREB% and allow only 43% NoT eFG% from Wisconsin Basketball. For a Stop Factor of 1.70!

Three Keyes for the Badgers vs. Western Illinois:

• Attack Western Illinois Early & Do It Often!!
  • Western Illinois has the 2nd Worst Avg. Possession Length allowed at 15 Seconds per Defensive Possession. A lot of this per Shot Quality is because they’re allowing Transition Possessions on 13% of all defensive possessions and are allowing 1.24 PPP in those allowed opportunities. The Badgers need to take advantage of those because in the Half-Court, Western Illinois isn’t bad allowing only 0.92 PPP!
• Pressure them & create live-ball turnovers = Easy Transition
  • Western Illinois has a 21.1% Turnover Rate (312th in the NCAA). But 13.6% are live-ball turnovers. That is 1.88 Standard Deviations above the average rate, meaning they are EXTREMELY loose with the basketball. Couple that with our 6.7% Steal Rate (Top-40), and we could see a ton of easy transition buckets!
• PACK THE PAINT
  • Western Illinois shoots about 25% from 3P…that isn’t going to get it done at any level. But with that and a pretty high 3PA Rate, that could spell some issues from an offensive rebounding standpoint. Especially if we over extend and don’t have a great overall rebounding position. Given our usual defensive strategy around P&R ball screens, I don’t see this as an issue. But if UW gets some early steals, getting overly aggressive and out of good guarding/rebounding position can be very easy. We need to fight this on Monday and maintain discipline!

Let’s see how things go Monday Night. This will be far and away the worst opponent we’ve faced this year, but we can’t play down to our competition, and we can’t look ahead to Marquette!

On Wisconsin!

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