GAME NOTES: The Indiana Hoosiers (7-6) conclude the pre-conference portion of their schedule on Friday night as they host the Youngstown State Penguins (2-10) at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in Bloomington. Tip-off is set for 8:00 PM. The game will be broadcast on BTN with Brandon Gaudin & Bob Wentzel on the call. This will be the first ever game between the two programs. Youngstown State will most likely be the lowest ranked team the Hoosiers face all season in the KenPom rankings, sitting at 330th out of 351 teams nationally. KenPom has IU as a 21 point favorite with a 97% chance of victory and Vegas puts the Hoosiers down as a 23.5-point favorite.
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
With the pre-conference slate of games coming to end we thought we’d look at how IU’s pre-conference performance might translate to conference play. In other words, based on past performance, what does an 8-6 start generally mean we should expect for a conference record?
Of course there are a number of variables involved and this is far from scientific, but we thought it might be useful insight and perspective. A few notes:
(1) We went back 20 years. This covers 4 different coaches and a wide range of different types of seasons.
(2) The Win percentage ratio is the conference win percentage divided by the pre-conference win percentage. As you might expect the pre-conference win percentage has typically been higher since that portion of the season is often stacked with easier games. The average of the last 20 years tells us that Indiana has a conference win percentage that has been 72% of its pre-conference win percentage. This would translate to 7 or 8 wins for 2018.
So what do you think? Is 7 or 8 Big Ten wins about right for this team? Obviously this is just one way to think about how things might play out. In a couple days we’ll do our actual Big Ten team profiles and predictions.
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