Preview: Purdue vs. Newberry - November 3rd - 8:00 pm - BTDN

The Newberry Wolves come to town in what promises to be a much louder Mackey Arena than Tuesday night's exhibition game against Montevallo.  Who'd have thought that many are more excited for this game than the football game against Penn State earlier in the day?

Scar, the Newberry wolf, scares little children.

Why Purdue Will Win -  Newberry returns 6 players from a team that lost to Anderson in their conference tournament.  Anderson then lost to Montevallo in the NCAA tournament.  Purdue took care of Montevallo on Tuesday and expects to get more than 0 points from senior DJ Byrd tonight.  Plus, The Exponent says that Newberry forced 0.5 turnovers per game last season.  If true (and when is The Exponent ever wrong?), this would be the worst turnover percentage in the history of organized basketball which makes me feel pretty good about Purdue's chances.

Why Newberry Will Win -  Newberry's game notes say they actually forced 20.5 turnovers per game last year.  Plus, they also had the number 2 scoring offense in Division II, averaging 87.9 points per game (only behind West Liberty's 102.4 [!] ppg).  If the freshmen get flustered and turn the ball over a lot, Newberry could make this a game.  Look out for Dondray Walker, one of the top players in Newberry's conference, while keeping an eye out for Icelandic national team member, Aegir Steinarsson.  The only thing you need to know about Steinarsson is found in Newberry's official game notes:

In other Steinarsson-related information, his middle name is Thor, which is just awesome.

Yes, the game notes really say "which is just awesome".  I like these guys.

One thing you absolutely need to know before the game -  The game is on Big Ten Digital Network again, meaning you'll need to pay to watch it.  As I mentioned earlier in the week, it's a monthly subscription, and  you WILL want to watch Purdue's home opener on BTDN against Bucknell.  So you might as well suck it up and pay the $9.95.

For those of you fools who sent me text messages about how "it's 15 bucks now" while I was at perhaps the only Cleveland Cavaliers win of the entire season, you clicked the wrong link!  I put up 2 links last time - one to tell you a little about BTDN (which only allows you to buy the $15 subscription) and the other was the link you should click on to subscribe to the Purdue-only feed ($9.95).  So to avoid confusion, I'm only including one link: CLICK ME TO GET THE $9.95 SUBSCRIPTION!!! There, now you can't miss it.

Our Picks - We like to think we're better than Vegas.  So throughout the season, we'll be "betting" a whole dollar amount versus the spread between $1 and $32, but we can't repeat the same value twice.  At the end of the year, we'll see if we would have made enough money to make a move to Vegas worth it.  The spread for this game is once again Purdue -25 (I just made that up since it's an exhibition game, but it seemed reasonable).

Erik's Bet: $14
Erik's Pick: Purdue 87 - Newberry 61

Kirk's Bet: $32
Kirk's Pick: Purdue 70 - Newberry 50

Standings Through 1 Game
Erik +$12
Kirk -$31

Values already bet
Erik 12
Kirk 31


Boiler Up!

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