Man, it's been a slow week. No games for the Jazz, no news, and no blogging from me. There haven't even been enough links to throw anything together. And with the Jazz off until Tuesday after this game, it will be that way.
Thank goodness for the NCAA tourney, right?
I don't know why the Jazz are so heavily favored in this game. Not that I think they don't have it in them, but OKC beat the Spurs earlier, they beat the Mavs without Durant and Green, and of course they waxed us last time there..
A big reason for that loss was that we couldn't hit anything and we couldn't stop them. The only way we stopped them was by fouling and that sent them to the line 38 times where they made 33.
So if we can cut out on the fouls, we'll be in good shape. Last month when the Jazz were 10-1, they committed only 20 fouls a game on average compared to their season average of 22.4.
Here's a chart I threw together that shows how many times the Jazz foul a game, the number of times that count happens, their W/L, and a running percentage. The boxes on the end show the winning percentage of the highlighted groups.
The running winning percentage takes a relatively big drop going from 21 to 22 fouls a game. But if the Jazz foul less than 21 times a game, they win at a 76% clip (62 wins on the year).
If they foul 22 times a game or more, they're only winning 48% of the time. I guess it's not rocket surgery.
So limit the fouls to 21 or less, and we're in great shape.