Dustin Dow at the Cincinnati Enquirer weighs in on the affect of coaching changes in advancing Xavier’s game with Temple, and draws some parallels between Temple and SLU.

Speaking on a similar topic on the Monday coaches conference call, UMass’ Travis Ford made the case that you have to adapt to the players you have, though he had an extreme case when he first got to Amherst. Ford prefers an uptempo game, like he’s running this season, but when he had Freeman and Lasme, 6-9 and 6-8 respectively, you put them to work.

I need to run some numbers on it to see how they compare to those around them based on possessions, but SLU is 18th in the nation in scoring defense, allowing 58 points a game. Of course, they are also 315th (out of 328) in scoring offense at 57.1. Surprisingly, they are 21st in fewest fouls committed. (Last Thursday, GW went to the free throw line just three times, and in the game before that, IUPUI had just six from the stripe.) And they are 327th, out of 328, in steals per game, at 3.8. (I’m not sure who the team with one less is.)