Bills vs. Dawgs

The Billikens will play their first true road game of the season on Wednesday night when they visit the Georgia Bulldogs of the Southeastern Conference.
Save for a miracle run to the SEC Tournament title and NCAA berth at the end of the 2008 season, the Georgia program has been struggling in recent years.
After making a late run at Mizzou coach Mike Anderson, the university brass went West and tabbed former Nevada coach Mark Fox as the new man in charge. Fox had a nice run at Nevada as an assistant under Trent Johnson (now at LSU) and a head coach.
Like the Billikens, the Dawgs are young and still trying to find themselves during this building stage. One of those fine building blocks is 6'9" 247-pound sophomore Trey Thompkins. An All-SEC Freshmen Team pick in 2009, Thompkins is currently averaging 15.6 points and 8.8 rebounds a game.
Thompkins represents another excellent big man that the Bills have to contend with for the third consecutive game. It will be fun to watch Thompkins match up with Bills center and fellow sophomore Willie Reed, who is coming off an excellent showing at the Chicago Invitational Challenge.
Supporting Thompkins on the perimeter are fellow sophomores Travis Leslie and Dustin Ware. Leslie is a big, bodied swingman at 6'4" and 205 pounds, the kind of player that has been having much success against us as of late. He is averaging 12 points and five rebounds a game. I would not be surprised to see Femi John guarding Leslie at times. Femi's physical strength has come in handly on defense. he was the only player who could physically match the strength of Notre Dame's Ben Hansbrough last Saturday. Femi has a chance to develop a nice niche on his team as a defender, rebounder who can knock down the occasional jumper, preferrably from the middle area.
Ware is a 5'11" point guard, who started as a freshman, as did our own Kwamain Mitchell. Ware leads the team in assists. The third guard is 6'1" senior Ricky McPhee who averages nine points a game.
The Bulldogs have some pretty good size and beef along the front line in addition to Thompkins. Junior Jeremy Price goes 6'8" and 264 pounds, junior Chris Barnes is 6'8" and 240 while senior Albert Jackson is 6'11" and 265. Willie, Brian Conklin, Corey Remekun and Jon Smith have to do a good job of holding their position and not getting pushed under the basket by the beefy frontcourt players of UGA.
That shouldn't be too much of a problem for Brian, who has also been playing some excellent ball on the interior. the more physical the game, the more he likes it, regardless of how much height he gives up to his opponent.
It should be interesting to see how the Billikids perform in their first road game in a hostile enviornment. To win on the road, you have to play with poise and be able to make big shots at key junctures of the game. We have to avoid that critical stretch where a team can get away from us quickly, like Iowa State and Notre Dame did. it will be interesting to see what we took from last weekend and how much we learned from it.
We definitely have to knock down some perimeter shots. We have to find a happy medium between the hot-shooting (22 of 47 from the three) that we saw in the first two games of the Chicago Challenge and the frosty 4 for 33 shooting from 3-point land.
Kwamain got into a nice rhythm in our last game against Notre Dame, especially from the mid-range area. That is good to see because that mid-range jumper is available to him all the time, as opposed to him overpenetrating into the land of the giants and forced to leave his feet to make a difficult pass. He can do a lot of damage making the nice 10 to 12 footer off the bounce as well as getting all the way to the basket.
Look forward to bringing you the action along with my SLU Hall of Fame play-by-play partner Bob Ramsey.
Enjoy the game.
Go Bills.