San Francisco Preview

Dons have won 7 of past 9, losing only at Gonzaga & at Saint Mary's

One of the hotter teams in the WCC, the Dons appear to be near/on the bubble for the NCAA tournament - at present noted forecaster Joe Lunardi has only two WCC teams in the 68-team bracket (Saint Mary’s, Gonzaga). San Francisco is currently #61 in the KenPom rankings - so a victory over Pacific is virtually essential for the Dons to be considered for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

San Francisco’s two senior guards are the key to this team: 6’5” Malik Thomas (#1), the WCC’s leading scorer at 20.6 ppg in conference play, has scored in double digits in all WCC games with the exception of the loss at Saint Mary’s (8 points). Thomas shoots a stellar 42.7% from three and 86% from the free throw line. 6’2” Marcus Williams (#55) adds 15.4 ppg and adds 4.3 assists per game (#6 in the WCC). This pair of dynamic guards is responsible for almost half of USF’s scoring and more than half of their threes.

The rest of the starters are #2 7’0 Carleton Linguard Jr. (10.3 ppg/5.1 rpg), #5 6’6” FR Tyrone Riley (8.3 ppg/5.7 rpg) - one of the top freshmen in the WCC and #35 6’9” SO Chinese import Junjie Wang. Riley appears to have hit the proverbial freshman wall - he was held scoreless vs. San Diego and has just one double digit scoring game in the Dons last five. Wang has been foul prone.

First player off the bench usually is #0 5’11” SO Ryan Beasley who missed the first four games of the season but has become a spark for the Dons with five consecutive games of double-digit scoring including 16 on 7-10 shooting vs. Gonzaga. Beasley’s streak was interrupted in USF’s most recent win over San Diego (7 points on 1-7 shooting).

6’2” SR Robby Beasley, 6’6” FR Veniamin Abosi (Greece) and 6’9” FR James O’Donnell (Australia) also see generally limited minutes off the bench.

This is a guard-oriented team that Pacific hung with in their first meeting in Stockton: recall the Tigers led 74-73 with just over three minutes remaining in the game before succumbing to a game-deciding 10-2 run highlighted by late, back-to-back threes from Linguard and Williams. But Pacific matches up reasonably well with the Dons who have been perimeter-oriented without a dominant inside post presence offensively. USF shot a tidy 12 for 28 from downtown in the first game and 51% overall at a time when our Tigers were still in the process of learning the intricacies of Dave Smart “d”. Recall also in that game that 6’4” Petar Krivokapic did not attempt a single field goal.

Game time tomorrow is 7 PM PT / 10 PM ET from the War Memorial at The Sobrato Center in San Francisco on Senior’s Night.