(1) Friday's Big East Game 12/8/17

[adoraz]

this is the game we 100% need him for to have a realistic possibility of an upset

Stopped reading there. Can't stand Hooper always whining and playing the victim.

We are 5.5 PT underdogs, which means we probably have about a 35% chance of winning. We are 8-1 with an RPI of 18 right now which is far more than we could've asked for. Frankly, we are lucky to be at 8-1 since some of the games we very easily could've lost. We won the last 2 games without him as well. ASU also has a major piece injured I heard, and in addition they have a major piece eligible on Sunday (so we miss him).

I am absolutely not expecting a win, and I will not get my hopes up, but playing the victim here is ridiculous. Going to be a fun game with nothing to lose but a lot to gain!

[billyjack]

We will be with LoVett this game as he recovers from a sprained knee. Supposedly it's not a bad one, but the staff does not want to risk it at all and have him out for conference play.

It's really tough because on one hand, this is the game we 100% need him for to have a realistic possibility of an upset and winning this game would catapult us into the national conversation and possibly get us ranked. On the other hand, it's early and we need him for the long haul, so we have to let him heal up.

The timing is never good with injuries to key players, but it's a shame we will be without him for our first real statement game. I do think we still have a slight chance of beating them without LoVett, but it will take essentially a near perfect game from us and an off day for ASU.

I'd be more hopeful if we played better in Florida...this team does not seem to perform well at all when traveling long distances even in wins. It's really odd how opponents like Mizzou can lose a key player and they keep chugging along and when we lose a key player it usually ends up hurting us pretty badly.

In the Cuse game the other year Lydon was hurt and it didn't look like he'd play and then he did end up playing well against us. Just bad luck I guess but it seems to slowly be turning around for us. We still have a chance and maybe we catch them off-guard looking ahead to Kansas.

If we really want to be taken seriously nationally, we have to start winning some of these games against real teams. Butler does it, PC does it, Nova does it, X does it, Seton Hall does it, Creighton does it, etc.

The last ranked team we beat was Butler last year at #13, but before that I think we lost something like 13 in a row against ranked teams (of course we had some bad teams the past few years too). Beating OOC ranked teams early in the season is huge if you don't want to sweat on selection Sunday.

We are due for a red-hot game offensively and if we can keep our defense respectable and get lots of TO's we have an outside chance.

Just some harmless poking MullinM. You covered a lot of ground with this post. I enjoy your contributions to HLOH and your unyielding fandom of the Redmen...er, Storm.

Haha...unfortunately I don't really watch The Simpsons as crazy as that sounds so that went over my head...but I would assume it may mean I repeat myself a lot or my mind wanders as I type which would be accurate on both counts. I'm fighting the urge to get my hopes up for this game. Progress is slow and we are making it, but we are so hungry to get these big time wins against ranked teams.

In addition to switching to Sanka (just joking), i think paragraphs would help a ton. Every 2 or 3 sentences you should start a new paragraph, not even to separate thoughts, but to allow the reader to take a breath. See above on this post where I've made some paragraphs...

[hoyahooligan]

Go Johnnies!

Too young to have too much hate towards your team, (your fans are a different story though )

But it's good for the conference for you to win this game.

[Edrick]

If you can project one stat, you can probably guess the result of tonight's game.

Arizona State is 21st in the country in TO% and St Johns is 3rd in the country as causing turnovers.

The game is won or lost by the number of turnovers Arizona State has.

[BigEast1]

MullinMayhem, I think it's safe to say that most teams, aside from the Dukes, Kentuckys & Michigan States of the world have a tough time beating ranked out of conference opponents on the road.

[stever20]

If you can project one stat, you can probably guess the result of tonight's game.

Arizona State is 21st in the country in TO% and St Johns is 3rd in the country as causing turnovers.

The game is won or lost by the number of turnovers Arizona State has.

I think a bigger question will be can St John's stay out of foul trouble.

Arizona St is #1 in the country in FTA/FGA. St John's is #264 in that stat defensively.. It could be a parade to the free throw line for the Sun Devils tonight.

[Jet915]

Johnnies down 2 with 3 min to go...

[milksteak]

That was SJU’s last shot at a resume-building OOC win. The UCF win was good, but it really isn’t resume-building. Don’t really see them getting into the NCAAs without at least 20 wins. They’ll be solidly on the bubble for most of conference season if I had to guess.

[MullinMayhem]

I'm always going back and forth between my brain and my heart. My brain said we were definitely losing this game and my heart said, "hey you never know". This is just not the type of game we win since I've been following closely as of 2011. I think this makes us something like 1-14 in the past few years playing ranked teams. Obviously it's skewed since we had some rebuilding years in that sample, but if we want to be more than just hype like we are every year, we need to eventually win a few of these games.

Arizona State got lucky to run into us after a cross country trip without a major key player. St. John's...always the bridesmaid, never the bride!

[hoyahooligan]

Hey they were more competitive than Xavier was.