The University of St. Thomas Tommies tonight travel on the road to Moscow, Idaho to play the Vandals, and then return home to play Sacramento State in Year 1 of the Big Sky vs Summit League Challenge. The Tommies are coming off decisive wins over North Dakota, and UMKC over the last week, and are now in a position that according to most CBB rankings programs that they are, early in the season, the best team in the Summit League.
According to the NCAA’s NET Rankings, Kenpom, Evan Miya, and Barttorvik, UST is ahead of SDSU in terms of team performance. Gambling markets are still not so hot on the Tommies, and still have them as 3rd to win the conference regular season crown behind SDSU and ORU.
Big-Sky vs Summit Preview
St. Thomas at Idaho 1/3
The Tommies beat the Vandals in-state rival Idaho State in an absolutely grueling low-scoring matchup. UST has some common opponents, Portland State and Cal Poly. Idaho against lost a very high paced matchup with Portland State last Saturday, and beat Cal Poly by 15 earlier in November, the same month the Toms lost to them by 1 in Riverside. The team playing Idaho tonight, looks a lot different than the one that played in California against Cal Poly. St. Thomas has defended guard play very well, which makes the Idaho matchup ideal, as their best player is 5-10 guard D’Angelo Minnis. Both teams are top 50 in 3 point rate, so expect plenty of shots from both teams from deep, however UST is significantly better defensively. My prediction is another low scoring game that St. Thomas is able to control, the score may be close, but will not tell the story of how UST suffocated the Vandals shooting.
Prediction 65-60 Tommies
St. Thomas vs Sacramento State
This is by far the easier of the two Big Sky games. Sac State has only won 1 division 1 game this year, against UC Davis. The Hornets are coached by Ben Simmons Godfather David Patrick, who is in his second year at the helm. This season is off to a rough start for them, as they were picked 4th in the Big Sky Pre-Season poll. Compare that to Idaho, who was picked dead last. Sac State shoots the ball from 3 50% of the time, making them the 4th highest 3 point shooting team in CBB. They routinely shoot over 30 a game, but not all of them are good looks. UST will be the second best team they have played this year. UST is ranked 129th, is one place behind Tulane at 128, who beat them by 35. Given that this game is over a weekend at Schoenecker, UST could, and should beat this team by 20.
Score Prediction: 75-55 Tommies.
Defensive Improvement
By almost all metrics, UST had the best month in D1 program history in December. Drake Dobbs and Raheem Anthony’s defensive ability is something we have not seen from UST guards in the D1 era. UST in 2022 gave up 116 points per 100 possession, that was down to 108 last season, and today it sits at 101. Defense has clearly been a focus in Coach Tauer’s roster management, and talent development, and that effort has paid off.
Using the whole shot clock
This St. Thomas team, with a couple exceptions, has forced all of their opponents to play at their pace. That strategy has worked well for a couple reasons. First, it works because everyone is a shooting threat from anywhere on the court, and are also unselfish with their own shot selection. Parker Bjorklund adding a 3 points shot to his game changes how people will have to defend him, and the team at large. Second, this strategy works because UST is disciplined with the ball. As UST tries to find the right shot on the perimeter it requires that the players out there can do so without turning the ball over, and UST has been able to accomplish that. Tony Bennett at Virginia was able to win a national championship with some of the least flashy offense around, and that is probable the most comparable style of offense to St. Thomas’s style of play. Finally, it works if you can defend the other team, a slow tempo really hampers trying to makeup a deficit.
Plus 3
1.) Carter Bjerke and Ben Nau off the bench are tremendous. It shows the depth and selflessness of this team by the fact that their 2 best 3 point shooters have to wait for their rotation to come into the game.
2.) Luck is a metric measured by Ken Pom that largely determines the degree to which a team is playing above or below what the record would indicate. UST has the second worst luck, which means that they somehow are not playing as good as they can be, which I find to be good news.
3.) In researching the origin of the city name of Moscow, the city website said is said that there is no evidence the city was named related to the capital of Russia. How is that possible? I also did not know that the town is pronounced Mos-Co, not Mos-Cow.