Projection for Wofford

Don't sleep on the Terriers. I have the Terriers as the 38th rated team. This is a good team. The average of the 32 computer polls on the Massey site has them rated 64th. No matter how you slice it this is a dangerous and good team. Wofford is 4-1 with their losses to North Carolina by 11 points and to Oklahoma by 11 points. Their SOS is a respectable 87th ranked. They are well-balanced. Their offensive ranking is 54th and their defensive ranking is 41st. KU's offense is ranked 8th and their defense is ranked 81st. This is currently (at least thus far) a better defensive team than Kansas. I have Kansas as a 10.8 point favorite with about a 91% probability of winning and a projected score of 81.1 to 70.3. Of course, Kansas had over a 97% probability of winning against Stanford. This is a much better team than Stanford. Wofford has steadily improved. The last two games they have outperformed by an average of 8.7 points. Kansas was very consistent in the first 5 games neither improving nor getting worse until the Stanford game where they underperformed by 11.4 points. Wofford's trend could be called a legitimate trend so it is reasonable to think they are legitimately getting better. KU's Stanford performance is hopefully just an aberration. You can be the judge if you take the over or under on the 10.8 point spread based on these trends. Below are the various outputs with the statistics.

I'm not losing sleep over Wofford. Everything I've read says that they're a deadly 3 point shooting one-trick pony.

Not saying we can't lose (we certainly can) but this seems like a game where we'll have an opportunity to work on certain things.

I don't anticipate much if any resistance in the paint, so I expect to see Lawson and Dok work on their interplay. I'd also like to see some of our guards (including Vick) get some practice driving into the paint and drawing contact. Bottom line, on offense, this should be a scrimmage where we get some much needed work done.

The main event, of course, will be how well (or poorly) we're able to defend the 3. We stunk at it last year and lost to Villanova. We haven't done very well this year, and Jerod Haase's team exposed us further in that regard. With that said, we KNOW that they're going to come in and let it fly, often from well beyond the line, so the real test will be to see how well we defend this.

I'm sure Wofford will make their share of 3's tonight, but I'll be looking to see how well out bigs get out on them (when necessary), who's leaving his man, who looks lost, and who isn't hustling.

In the end, I just think we have too much offense for Woffard to deal with, so this is really just a good opportunity for us to see how well we can defend the 3. We know what's coming. They've had a couple days to practice for it. Now it's time for the quiz. Nevertheless, even if we only manage a "C" I think we'll get the W.

I guess we can blame me if we drop this one for jinxing the guys.