MU faces all juniors & seniors & one of the top defenses in Savannah State at 1 p.m. Saturday

For a quick preview of Savannah State today, the item that jumped out is that everyone who will be on the court will be a Junior or Senior the entire game.  They have experience and appear to be a decent club - I ranked them 150th in Value Add to start the year, though they have been barely staying in the top 200 so far.

They have the 32nd best defense in the country allowing only 90.5 points per 100 trips due to one of the best defenses against shooting (opponents make only 40.1% of their 2-pointers for the 19th best defensive total) and they turn opponents over 24.4% of the time (48th best total).  However, their offense is the 323rd best out of 347 as they are really having trouble shooting.  They held a likely NCAA-bound Tennessee Tech to just a 58-55 win, and grinded out a 39-38 win over Western Illinois en route to a 5-5 start.

They have one pretty legitmate star in No. 44 Jyles Smith, who is blocking 17.2% of all opponents 2-point shots for the 5th best total in the country, and he is grabbing 25% of opponents missed shots for the 43rd best total in the country to finish as the 457th best player.

He is one of six players in the top 1100 and each of them seems to have something they are good at if you look down the right column.  Marquette has 8 (ok, Derrick Wilson is up to 1101st and I'm counting him).

If you believe in comparative scoring then they would win easily since they lost by only 58-40 at Florida, a 15-point better total than Marquette had there.  However, Marquette actually goes in a double digit favorite, but definitely a team that will want to use patience and experience to see if they can frustrate MU and have a shot at the upset.

Jer	Rnk	Savannah St./MEAC	Ht	Class	Off	Def	PG Per	Value Add	National Leader in
44	457	Smith, Jyles	6'8	3 Jr	0	-3.43	0	3.43	5th best shot blocker in country 17,2%, 43rd best rebounder 25.0%
1	818	Blackman, Preston	6'0	4 Sr	0	-0.74	1.5	2.24	Assists
5	898	Smith, Cedric	6'3	4 Sr	0	-1.52	0.5	2.02	Off Reb 11.4%
11	1038	Wilson, Stephen	6'1	3 Jr	1.08	-0.66	0	1.74	Steals 3.5%
22	1043	Hassan, Rashad	6'7	4 Sr	1.01	-0.73	0	1.74	Shooting and Drawing Fouls
34	1080	Louis, Arnold	6'7	4 Sr	0	-1.66	0	1.66	Offensive Rebound 10.8%, Defensive rebounding 20.2%
2	1732	White, Khiry	6'3	3 Jr	0	-0.68	0	0.68	3.8% steals in limited time, but nothing else
0	1820	Burger, Robert	6'0	3 Jr	0	-0.58	0	0.58	5.0% steals in limited minutes
23	1979	Spears, Christopher	6'7	3 Jr	0	-0.4	0	0.4	18.0% defensive rebound in limited play
10	2185	Hendley, Patrick	6'4	3 Jr	0	-0.17	0	0.17	really struggling
20	2397	Williams, Deven	6'0	3 Jr	0.59	0.6	0	0	solid except for shooting slump, few turnovers