I don’t have a separate blog preview for this game because, in a throwback to days of yore, there should be one in the paper on Tuesday. Just don’t go thinking there will be one for every game (like Savannah State coming up Saturday).

So I’ll use this space for a digression. One thing I’m charting this season in my vast collection of arcania is how SLU does coming out of timeouts. Coaches — not just Majerus, but every coach — seem ticked when they have the ball coming out of a timeout, they diagram some brilliant play, and it goes blotto when the point guard dribbles the ball off his foot.

I’ve never been a big fan of the time out coaches feel obliged to call in the last minute of the first half which is going to go away if they don’t use it leaves me empty. And, as in the Kent State game, where a Kent State player called time while battling for a loose ball in the first couple minutes. Surely that timeout must have had more value later, no? But coaches love timeouts. When I covered USC years ago, the post 4-minute deadball timeout didn’t occur until there were 0.3 seconds on the clock. The referees went to the coaches and said, let’s not take it and let’s finish up the half. George Raveling insisted on taking it since his team had the ball. As I recall, they didn’t get anything resembling a good shot. (Strangely, Raveling works his way into these blogs more than any of the other coaches I’ve covered over the years.)

So in my stat book I have a page dedicated to timeouts, for which I’ve developed a code so complex that five games into the season I’m not sure if I can keep it straight. I’m not exactly sure what I expect to find. A young team like SLU would likely benefit from a timeout before running a play, since everyone would be on the same page. If they didn’t score, it would likely be because of a breakdown in execution (or a stellar defensive effort by the other guys), which I guess is more likely with a young team. But there are also timeouts called by coaches to stop the other team’s momentum. And there are TV timeouts, which occur almost randomly throughout the game. (Yes, they come at the first deadball after the 16, 12, 8 and 4 minute marks, but they aren’t necessarily linked to any particular action in the game.)

So what have we seen so far? Well, just looking at timeouts called by SLU — not TV timeouts — SLU didn’t get a whole lot for its buck against Detroit. Of the five timeouts SLU called — and I think all were called by Majerus — SLU only got one basket after them. Two of the timeouts came during deadballs before Detroit had possession; Detroit scored once and turned the ball over the other. On the other two possessions when SLU had the ball coming out of its own timeout, it had a turnover and a missed shot — the play at the end of the game.

SLU had the ball seven times coming out of a TV timeout; it scored on three of them, missed shots on three others and turned the ball over. For comparison purposes, Detroit scored just once after its three time outs (times out?), and scored after the only time it had the ball coming out of a TV timeout.

SLU did much better against Nebraska, scoring three times coming out of its called timeouts and stopping Nebraska on another one. Only one timeout, the first of the second half, didn’t produce a positive result for SLU.

In general, prior to the Detroit game, it seems SLU did pretty well coming out of its own timeouts, scoring four times against Kent State and three times against Boston College.

What does all this mean? I have no idea. Obviously, when a coach calls a timeout, he’s hopeful that it will generate a positive result, whether offensively or defensively. In the past few games, Majerus has had to use his timeouts as rally killers more than he would probably like, denying him some for strategic purposes down the stretch. And though my sample size is quite limited, teams seem to do better after called timeouts than after TV timeouts. I have no good theory on that.

Anyway, it’s something I’m looking at, and if I see any trends or make any brilliant revelations over the course of the year, I’ll let you know. It’s also possible I’ll get to the end of the season and realized I wasted a lot of time doing that.

xxxx

The little capsule that runs tomorrow with the game includes starting lineups for each team. Gotta confess: It’s a shot in the dark on SLU. I would expect Liddell to be back in the first five based on the fact he was in the for the start of the second half at Detroit. Will Eberhardt play because of better matchups with SIUC, who will likely go with three guards and two forwards, both 6-8? Or is it Thompson? I’m not sure, and Majerus’ standard response to my questions about the starting lineup is, “Starting’s for high school.”

SLU has yet to win a jump ball this season. The bright side of that is that the first held ball of the game always goes to them. Or they get the ball at the start of the second half.

For the stat obsessed in the audience, I’m told the revised Nebraska box score with corrected minutes should be on the SLU website. And I’m not sure if it got into general circulation or not, but the first box score put out after the Detroit game had Femi John playing 0+ minutes, a number usually reserved for someone who got in for only a few seconds. Femi didn’t play in the game.

Life on the beat:

I was over at SLU today talking to Anne Kordes for a volleyball story for later this week. In a journalism first for me, she offered me a piece of homemade pie.