UMN/IU NCAA men's basketball boxscore

I don't get the big ten network here in Philly, so i wasn't able to watch my Golden Gophers obliterate the Fighting Illini tonight. But I did look at the box score. Here it is I don't think I've ever seen anything like it - 84 points scored, all by the starters. Only 4 SHOTS from the entire bench, in a combined total of 31 minutes played. Every single starter played at least as long as the ENTIRE bench.

I feel like I should tie this into gambling somehow...ummm...what's a fair line on a prop-bet on a division I NCAA men's basketball team's bench scoring 0 points in a winning effort? 1000:1?

I don't know how you would do that, it would really depend on who they were playing. I think this might have been a game with a better chance of that happening than many others, though, because you're going to have your starters in longer (generally) against a good team. If they were going up against a glorified H.S. Basketball team, then you would expect the bench to be more likely to score some points simply because of time on the floor.

I can see how this happened looking at the play-by-play, the game was more or less within reason until under 5:00 to go in the Fourth Quarter.

It looks like they were letting Illinois shoot all night and they just couldn't make anything. If you keep the number of shots the same but trade the percentages:

Minnesota:

51 FGA * .354 = 18 for 36 Points
15 3PA * .125 = 2 for 6 Points
27 FTA * .857 = 23 for 23 Points

65 Points

Illinois:

65 FGA * .529 = 34 for 68 Points
24 3PA *.6 = 14 for 42 Points
21 FTA * .778 = 16 for 16 Points

Illinois Wins: 126-65

Interesting stat switch mission, and I would much prefer that since I turned down Minnesota to go to grad school at Illinois. I did regret leaving the hot Minnesotan blondes behind though...

However, it's not really a fair comparison since when you make a shot, the other team ALWAYS gets the ball. In other words, if Illinois shot 53% from the field they wouldn't have had 65 attempts either.

Quote: tringlomane

I turned down Minnesota to go to grad school at Illinois. I did regret leaving the hot Minnesotan blondes behind though...

LOL! I did the opposite. Mostly because I didn't want to leave the Minnesotan blondes behind;-)

I watched this game and the reason the percentages are the way they are is because MN got a lot of open shots and MN also plays really tough D so IL was shooting contested 3's. It was not that great of a game from the bench for MN partly because the starters played so well the bench players did not get much time.

That's definitely true, I was mainly just trying to illustrate how God-Awful their shooting was tonight.

Just for kicks, let's take the mean shots taken and then switch the shooting percentages giving the teams an equal number of shots to see how the winner would compare to the loser based on shots taken.

58 FGA * .529 = 31 for 62 points
20 3PA * .6 = 12 for 36 points
24 FTA * .778 = 19 for 19 Points

WINNER: 117 Points

58 FGA * .354 = 21 for 42 points
20 3PA * .125 = 3 for 9 points
24 FTA * .857 = 21 for 21 points

LOSER: 72 Points

Score: 117-72

Illinois had six more Offensive Rebounds, (no surprise there) but they were out rebounded by five overall. Illinois also had two more steals, one more block and turned the ball over eight less times. It's kind of funny, I think, because if you looked at just those columns and at shots attempted and were asked, "Who do you think won," you'd probably say Illinois must have crushed them!

Ok, as a double Illinois grad I just need to say one thing...

Illinois is UI, not IU.

(I don't want to talk about the actual game)

And UI has some great brunettes (my wife)

Quote: FinsRule

Illinois is UI, not IU.

Damnit! Sorry! I went back and forth and then used the one that looked more-right to me.