KSU 83, Idaho State 57

Jamar SamuelsFive down, one to go. The Cats have a stretch of six games in a row against mostly second and third tier teams. After tonight’s victory, they are 5-0 and have won by an average of 31 points a game. Clearly, they are doing what’s necessary in preparation for the conference opener. They play Chicago State Monday, but then it’s Oklahoma next Saturday. That’s when we’ll really get to see what this team is made of.

One thing that pops out to me is the fact that six players had double digit EFF ratings for the game. This is only the second time this season (along with game one) when that was the case. The balance (season stats) has been there all along, but not within specific games. Tonight was different with eight players scoring between 8 and 15 points. That’s a positive in my opinion.

The single stat that pops out at me is Dominique Sutton’s eight steals. That’s a big number. However, what I find more interesting is the combo of Buchi Awaji and Justin Werner. With Pullen, Brown, Clemente and Sutton getting all the minutes, these two guards haven’t played much. However, in this game both went 3-6 from threes, scored 11 points and had an EFF of 12! In both cases, the scoring and EFF ratings were easily highs for the year. This just adds more fuel to the “balance” fire. I continue to remain intrigued with the Cats and am anxious to see how they do in the conference.

One negative is the free throw shooting. The team shot 58.8% tonight. That follows 53.3% and 59.3% the two games prior. They have to fix that! There is no way they can win shooting anywhere near that percentage.

Here are the Points Scored and the Efficiency Rating for each KSU player in the game. Also shown is their season scoring and season efficiency average.

For a better explanation of EFF click here.

EFF=[(Pts + Reb + Ast + Blk + Stl)–(Miss FG + Miss FT + TO)]