Tag: espn bpi

Auburn has 86% chance to beat George Mason on Monday

ESPN’s Basketball Power Index heavily favors the Tigers in Monday’s season opener.

The wait is finally over, Auburn fans. Basketball season has officially arrived. The No. 15 Auburn Tigers open the season on Monday night at Neville Arena, hosting George Mason at 7 p.m. CT on SEC Network+.

The Tigers lose first-round talent in [autotag]Walker Kessler[/autotag] and [autotag]Jabari Smith[/autotag] from last season’s team to the NBA, but still have plenty of talent returning such as [autotag]Zep Jasper[/autotag], [autotag]Wendell Green[/autotag], [autotag]Allen Flanigan[/autotag], and [autotag]K.D. Johnson[/autotag]. [autotag]Johni Broome[/autotag] joins the team as a valuable addition from the transfer portal.

Auburn will enter the game with an overall advantage in talent, which is why the ESPN Basketball Power Index gives the Tigers an 85.6% chance to earn the season-opening win over George Mason on Monday.

According to the initial BPI report, Auburn is ranked No. 12 nationally, which is sixth-best in the SEC. As for the Patriots of George Mason, they are No. 6 in the Atlantic 10, and No. 92 overall.

The ESPN BPI “is a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of performance going forward. BPI represents how many points above or below average a team is.”

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Auburn opens the season as No. 12 team in ESPN’s Basketball Power Index ranking

Expectations are high for Bruce Pearl and the Auburn Tigers to start the season.

The start of the college basketball season is nearly here and there is plenty of hype around [autotag]Bruce Pearl[/autotag] and the Auburn Tigers.

ESPN’s Basketball Power Index (BPI) has the Tigers ranked No. 12 in the country ahead of the start of the college basketball season.

The BPI “is a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of performance going forward. BPI represents how many points above or below average a team is.”

The metric can also be used to predict games and the Tigers are heavy favorites in their first two games of the season. They will open the season Monday night against the George Mason Patriots in Neville Arena.

They have an 85.6% chance to beat the Patriots and are predicted to win by 11.6 points.

They will return to action Friday in Neville Arena to take on the USF Bulls. They have an even better chance of winning this game. Being given a 91% chance to beat the Bulls and are predicted to win by 15 points.

Both games are scheduled to start at 7 p.m. CT and will be on ESPN+ and SEC Network+.

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Alabama’s tournament chances based on ESPN’s BPI

ESPN’s BPI doesn’t see the Tide as much of a threat to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament.

Alabama has made the trip to San Diego in preparation for its round of 64 matchup with either Rutgers or Notre Dame, who will play on Wednesday night in Dayton.

While Nate Oats and the Tide await their opponent, let’s take a look at what ESPN’s Basketball Power Index thinks about Alabama’s tournament chances.

According to BPI, the Crimson Tide has a 67.6% chance of advancing past the first round but only a 21.1% chance of advancing past round two. The Tide’s chances of advancing deeper into the tournament drop below 10% and Alabama has less than a 1% chance of reaching the final four and winning a national championship.

We will have to wait and see if the Crimson Tide can become overachievers and make a deep run in the tournament. With this year’s version of ‘Bama hoops, it’s hard to tell.

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Stay tuned to Roll Tide Wire for all the latest on the Alabama Crimson Tide!

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LSU Basketball: Tigers upset Tennessee in Baton Rouge

LSU improves to 14-1 on the year.

In what should have been a night where LSU cemented themselves as a SEC contender, the story became Xavier Pinson’s injury as he left the court with a ugly knee injury as LSU was trying to close out the win.

Pinson’s injury aside, it was a good night for LSU where they played some of the best basketball they have played all year.

The final score was 79-67 as LSU moved to 14-1 on the year.

Coming into the game, KenPom had LSU and Tennessee rated as the top two defenses in college basketball. These two teams were almost a mirror image of one another. Two elite defenses with offenses that have struggled at times.

For the first 17 minutes or so, it was a competitive game. LSU went on a run about 10 minutes into the game, but the Volunteers found a way to respond, trading some three’s with LSU near the end of the half.

After that, LSU found a way to take control of the game. LSU had one of their better shooting performances of the year, with a few players finding the net from deep on multiple occasions. LSU also had some huge momentum plays, including a big block from Alex Fudge and scoring off turnovers.

Tennessee found a little bit of life midway through the second half and made it a game at the end, but it wasn’t enough to dig out of 20 point hole, as LSU eventually pulled away again.

Here are some notes coming out of LSU’s win.

– This is LSU’s second consecutive win over a top 15 team in ESPN’s BPI. Earlier in the week, the Tigers defeated 5th ranked Kentucky. Tennessee ranked 11th coming in to the game. After losing the SEC opener to Auburn, it was critical for LSU to tack on a couple resume builders early in the season.

– This was LSU’s third consecutive game against a team in the SEC’s top tier. They’ll now get a brief reprieve as they face Florida and Arkansas, who are both quality opponents but not to the level that LSU has seen in their first three games.

– Tari Eason has arguably been LSU’s best player all year and he had another big game against Tennessee. He scored over 20 points and added a dunk that is sure to be seen on SportsCenter later tonight. Eason had a double-double, bringing in double digit rebounds and was a factor on the defensive end as well.

– Xavier Pinson’s injury cast a cloud over the win. Pinson has been critical to LSU’s success this year as a scorer and a facilitator. It’s not easy to find experienced guards who can run the floor and score, LSU has that in Pinson. A long-term injury would put drastically hurt LSU’s chances at doing something special this season. LSU is already thin at guard after losing Adam Miller to a torn ACL before the season started.

– LSU got a big performance from Brandon Murray. Murray, who missed the conference opener at Auburn, has now had back-to-back double digit games to start his SEC career. Murray was active on defense too, helping LSU create some turnovers.

ESPN BPI game-by-game predictions of Ohio State basketball’s 2021-2022 schedule

Here’s what ESPN’s BPI says are Ohio State hoops’ chances of winning each game on its 2021-2022 schedule and a running record.

In case this snuck up on you, the Ohio State basketball team opens up the season Tuesday night against in-state opponent Akron. There’s a lot we simply don’t know about this team with some key departures and additions, so it’ll be interesting to see the team develop.

Losing Duane Washington to the NBA was a hit, but getting Kyle Young and E.J. Liddell back for the season was a boost. Add in some interesting transfers like Cedric Russell, Joey Brunk, and Jamari Wheeler, and there are pieces there for Ohio State to be really good — if everything comes together.

After last season ended, expectations for this team were somewhere in the neighborhood of Final Four potential, but after all the shuffling of rosters across the college basketball landscape, many now see OSU as a fringe top-fifteen team … but that’s why they play the games.

We thought it would be interesting to take a look at ESPN’s BPI (Basketball Power Index) to see what it has to say about Ohio State’s chances of winning every game on its schedule using their “matchup predictor.” We do it for football, and we started to look at it for basketball last season and found it interesting to see how things change from expectations at the beginning of the year, through the season.

So off we go. Here’s a look at what ESPN’s BPI predicts as the percentage possibility of winning each game on the regular-season schedule for Ohio State before all the fun tips off on Tuesday evening.