Previewing the South Carolina vs Gonzaga Final Four Game Tonight
Final Four
No. 7 South Carolina vs No. 1 Gonzaga – 6:09 pm
Line: Gonzaga -6
There is a Cinderella playing in this game but it’s not the small school from Spokane that plays in the WCC. It’s the bigger name school from the SEC that crashed the Final Four. There will be some NBA talent on the floor today and a couple of conference players of the year.
The laziest narrative that I’ve seen so far with this game is comparing West Virginia’s defense to South Carolina’s. The only similarity is the fact both are extremely good defenses and they will get in your shorts at some point. The truth is West Virginia presses almost 100% of the time. South Carolina hardly presses. They want to get in your face in the halfcourt, extending the defense and force turnovers. South Carolina will rotate its defense from the extended man-to-man to a 3-2 matchup. I do expect to see more of the 3-2 zone than we will man-to-man, especially when Karnowski is on the floor. He’s too big and too good for South Carolina to try and match up with in man-to-man. They’ll want to force Gonzaga outside again and shade on Jordan Matthews trying to make others beat them.
I know people will freak out because the last time we saw Gonzaga play they shot the shit out of the ball against Xavier’s zone. But, if you’re playing percentages, Gonzaga is a better offensive team against man-to-man vs zones per Synergy. For Gonzaga, they have to play inside out. Similar to this play:
Karnowski is an excellent passer out of the post and there are some big guards that he can make the passes to. The key is going to be not getting complacent, relocating and doing little things like Nigel Williams-Goss setting the pin down screen here as Karnowski gets ready to make the pass. Florida had a ton of success playing against the zone in the 1h of the Elite Eight and what they did a good job of was cutting along the baseline, forcing the backline to move with the zone. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Matthews running off some screens going one side to another.
The biggest question though is can South Carolina continue to stay hot on the offensive side of the ball. They haven’t shot the ball well from the 3-point line (31% as a team, actually down from the regular season). But, they have been efficient, especially at driving to the rim. The key here is Sindarius Thornwell, who has been arguably the best player in the Tournament thus far. They like to use him in a couple of different sets, but they do a great job of getting him ISO’d in the high post. I do like showing this video against Florida so you can see how Martin designs the movement to get Thronwell ISO’d on the wing:
If Gonzaga feels like they can keep South Carolina off the offensive glass, expect to see them go with their 2-3 zone. They are a great defensive rebounding team in the man-to-man, but Thornwell can give them some fits because there’s not a great matchup on him. Do you put Johnathan Williams on him or a smaller guy like Matthews? You want to sag against the South Carolina team and force them into jumpers and clean up the glass. They have been rebounding about 33% of their misses this tournament, which is giving them some free possessions.
Pick: A lot of bets on South Carolina. They are the darling of the NCAA Tournament and Frank Martin is an awesome story. However, the offense has to slow down at some point, right? Gonzaga has the No. 1 defense on KenPom and that shows a lot. I’ll fade the bets and take Gonzaga -6. Obviously, fade me as I’m 28-30-2 so far in the NCAA Tournament ATS.