Game Preview: Southern Utah

Time: 7pm
Location: Hec Ed
TV: FSN

Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times provides us with another sufficiently insightful game preview/team status article. Southern Utah is a good shooting team, period. They averaging 6.4 threes a game on 15.5 attempts (good for 41.1 percent), and their overall shooting percentage is right at 50%. So far they have been running a 9 man rotation, but rely heavily on senior guard Steve Barnes, who leads SUU in points, assists and steals while playing 34.4 minutes per game. ESPN lists him as 5'11", and 80lbs. I hope for his sake that's a typo, otherwise the UW student section will blow him off the court with their cheers. Their only other player over 30 minutes is junior transfer Orlando Griego, whose stat line is not very impressive, so he must do the dirty work or something.

SUU is a short team. They have one giant junior named Brad Kanis, who is 7'2". He doesn't play much and scores even less. Other than him, no one on SUU tops 6'7", and nobody on their roster averages 5+ rebounds a game. This leads to at least one obvious mismatch problem for them when they face UW. If Spencer Hawes does not get the ball early in this game, it won't be a lack of trying, it will simply be due to SUU going all out to deny him the ball, leaving easy shots for the rest of the UW team.

I expect Brockman to have a huge game tonight, cleaning up garbage and getting easy dunks layups on offensive rebounds and passes from Hawes. SUU will have to double Hawes to contain him. If UW shows any outside touch, at least some of these double teams will come from the weakside post defender, leaving Brockman to do what he does best - finding open space near the rim and converting high percentage looks.

Prediction: UW wins in a rout, dominating the offensive glass and getting SUU into early foul trouble.