Seawolves Fans

ST. PETER'S (1-1)
Last Game: St. Peter's 62, La Salle 51 on 11/27/20
Last Game with SBU: St. Peter's 67, Stony Brook 46 on 12/28/09; Bryan Dougher team-high 18 points
Checkmate Unofficial Line: St. Peter's -8.5
NET Ranking: TBD
KenPom Rating: Stony Brook 246, St. Peter's 160
KenPom Prediction: St. Peter's 68, Stony Brook 61
Listen/Watch: https://saintpeterspeacocks.com/watch
Notables:
6-7/190 so F Fousseyni Drame 15.5 ppg, 6.5 rpg, 2.0 spg, .591 FG%
6-3/165 so G Darryl Banks III 13.5 ppg, .500 FG%, .583 3-pt FG%
6-7/195 jr F KC Ndefo 13.5 ppg, 7.0 rpg, 1.5 spg, 2.0 bpg, .550 FG%
6-0/160 so G Matthew Lee 6.5 ppg, 7.5 apg, 1.5 spg
6-4/170 jr G Dallas Watson 5.0 ppg, 4.0 apg

Let's do this? Please?

After what has to be the most tumultuous week in the program's history, I feel like we'll actually play this one. And hopefully it's the first many.

Nothing really new from the Bryant write-up for us. I suppose, however, that my projected starting lineup of Rodriguez, TSM, Diallo, Policelli and Gueye looks better now, with Diallo getting another week of rest for his ankle.

As a recap, here are the questions I have going into opening night ...
- Just how much has Gueye improved?
- How good are these new guys, particularly Policelli and Rodriguez?
- No really, how good are these guys?
- Who are our #1, 2, 3, etc. options offensively?
- We lost 85% of our made threes from last year. Who are our shooters?
- How well has the team jelled considering the inexperience playing together?

St. Peter's is no pushover, that's for sure. They're already two games in, and they've made an impression, nearly knocking off St. John's at Carnesecca Arena – they had a four point lead with under 30 to go – and steamrolling La Salle on a neutral floor. Imagine us manhandling an A-10 team? It'd be one of our hallmark victories. Pretty good.

Between the talent, experience and the aforementioned tumult, we could be in a good bit of trouble on Tuesday. There's a big difference between playing in practice and going up against a team that wants to run you out of their gym. It's not like SPU is bringing in three- and four-star guys, but they're recruiting hard-nosed guys from some of the upper echelon high schools in New York and New Jersey, and a lot of these guys helped them go 18-12, 14-6 in conference, last season.

Drame is the real star of the group, boasting some significant international experience to go with a solid freshman campaign at SPU. Last year, he helped his native Mali to the FIBA U-19 world championship game where it lost a relatively close game to the US. In their wake, countries with some basketball tradition – New Zealand, Puerto Rico, France. Drame averaged 12 and 9 for Mali in six games. Meanwhile, it was his brother, Hassan, who had 17, 9 and 4 (all team highs) against the US, which featured future NBA stars like Cade Cunningham, Jalen Green, Tyrese Halliburton, Kira Lewis, etc.

St. Peter's has plenty else going on also, with Ndefo a preseason All-MAAC selection, and a deep bench. That's really the Peacocks' bread and butter. Consider that last year nobody averaged more than 8.5 points per game, yet they had 12 guys who put up between 3.4 and 8.5 ppg a night. Kind of a strange stat to pull out, but also consider that 12 guys averaged at least 13 minutes a night a year ago, yet nobody topped 23. That is some valuable burn that a lot of these guys picked up as freshmen and sophomores, and now you see them blossoming this fall.

By the way, the Drames and Ndefo ... have connections to Long Island. The Drames went to OSNA, and Ndefo started high school at Elmont before finishing up at Lincoln HS in Coney Island. I think all three would've done well here!

My expectations are not great for this one. I just think that SPU has such an advantage on us on a number of levels, and we'll be lucky to keep it in single digits.

KenPom finally has the game up – a 68-61 SPU win. It's obviously all computer generated but still kinda interesting to look at. KenPom has us going 11-12, 9-9 in conference.

I know people barked about drawing Vermont and Albany away – I personally think it all evens out. My bigger thing is that we drew the short straw with having four home back-to-backs and five of them away. UMBC and UNH are the same, whereas UVM and UA are the way around – five home, four away. I didn't look up the others. I wonder how they figured that out.

It's interesting that some teams will enter conference play without having played a non-conference game. UVM, UA and NJIT have zero OOC games, while we're scheduled to play four, UMBC six, Hartford five, Binghamton four, UNH two and Maine one. Lowell had the three games in Bubbleville but then has three weeks off until the 12/19 AE opener.

Opening line in Vegas is SPU -7. We'd do very well if we covered that IMHO.

Wow, sounds like we may actually play this one.  A real line!  I saw the very end of the SPU-SJU game, and they blew an easy win, not knowing how to close out the game.  But the Lasalle win, means that they are probably a serious team to contend with.  Looking forward to the game;  I hope the SPU internet feed doesn't come down with Covid

Rubin interviews LES: https://stonybrookathletics.podbean.com/e/the-howl-s2-e15-stony-brook-mens-basketball-forward-leighton-elliott-sewell/

sounds like ford wants him to a be an athletic, up and down, full court 3, maybe a walker/moor type.

St. Peters?? Am I crazy for never hearing about this school before? I'm guessing they're in the NEC or the MAAC right?

Good low-major basketball program. All-time bad baseball program.

There stream sucks!!

So far it’s the worst live stream ever.

Update: slightly better

They’ve gotta be kidding with this stream. Their video sever has Covid evidently.