PPS Preview: Oakland vs. Valpo

Our Player Productivity Score study continues on as Valpo will welcome formal MidCon rival Oakland to the ARC on Saturday.  Oakland has several pretty decent scores, but they also have a couple very low scores from regular contributors.  Let's take a look at how the teams match up according to PPS.  The players are listed in the order they appear on Oakland's and Valpo's stat pages.

Oakland                                                                          Valparaiso
D. Hamilton         0.88308                                                R. Broekhoff        0.87241
T. Bader              0.46705                                                K. VanWijk         0.83744
C. Petros             0.69632                                                R. Edwards         0.72033
D. Valentine         0.61994                                                J. Harris              0.57674
L. Lucas-Perry    0.53053                                                M. Kenney          0.47843
R. Bass               0.30476                                                 W. Bogan           0.38174
B. Cushingway    0.26667                                                 E. Buggs             0.27315
D. Williams          0.11940                                                *B. Boggs

As you can see by the numbers, Hamilton is playing at a very high level so far this season.  Petros and Valentine are also off to nice starts and are having solid years.  Petros is foul prone and those high foul totals helped bring his number down a little bit.  Williams has played in every game and is averaging over 13 minutes per game.  He has not shot the ball well and is foul prone.  I think the key to a Valpo Victory is keeping Hamilton below a 1.0 score and limiting Petros and Valentine to scores below 0.6.

*For Valpo I included Ben Boggs who I suspect will make his debut on Saturday.  I'm hoping that he will effectively end Tommy Kurth's reign of terror, move Will Bogan to the back up point guard, and put Jay or Ben in the starting 2 guard spot.

Comparing the two teams' PPS this should play out to be a very competitive game.  I will give Valpo the slight edge due to the fact that the game is at the ARC (where Valpo is 4-0 this year).  I think Broekhoff, VanWijk, and Hamilton are going to fill up their stat lines and this game will be decided by which Richie Edwards shows up and can Harris and/or Bogan hit enough jumpers to allow our big guys to do their thing inside.