Maryland-Eastern Shore At Purdue: Preview, TV, Time, Odds, & More

After Saturday's loss to Butler Purdue has only a pair of non-conference games left. Both of them are this week as Purdue hosts Maryland Eastern Shore tonight and then travels to West Virginia on Sunday. While Sunday's game is far more important in terms of Purdue's postseason resume, Tonight's game has more of an "everything to lose and nothing to gain" feel about it.

I'll be blunt: Maryland Eastern Shore is not a good basketball team. After seven games they are one of the worst shooting teams in America at below 40% from the field. Last season they may have been the worst Division I team not named Grambling when they went 2-26 overall with only a pair of wins against MEAC competition, which was the worst overall conference in the country. They have already matched last season's win total (one is over a non D1 team), but Purdue gets almost no bonus for beating them.

The only thing at stake for Purdue is avoiding a bad loss. This should be an easy victory, but we have been here before. It was called Northern Kentucky and we came dangerously close to dropping that one.

UMES relies heavily on its five starters, as they have played the most minutes by far of anyone on the team. Hakeem Baxter leads them in points at 16.6 per game as a 6'2" freshman guard. Putting up those kinds of numbers as a freshman is good for a program like this. He will likely be a building block if they are going to ever get out of the MEAC basement.

The only other player in double figures is Kyree Jones at 16.0 per game, but he does this while shooting the ball. A Lot. He is shooting a solid 43% from the three-point arc and has 18 of the team's 40 made triples, but he is only 34.5% overall from the field. Isaac Smith III is also close to double figures with 9.8 points per game.

As I mentioned though, this team does not shoot the basketball well at all. They are 38.5% from the field as a team and 30.3% from three. That is good enough for 341^st in the nation, so there will be ample opportunity to pad rebounding stats. They have a game against a Big Ten team to use as comparison. Iowa blew them out 109-63 on November 14^th. Oregon State also dropped 98 points on them Sunday.

There is some size for Jay Simpson and A.J. Hammons to deal with in the post, as Francis Ezeiru is a 6'10" 260 pound junior center. He only averages 6.3 points and 6.4 rebounds per game and just 1.3 blocked shots.

Purdue really has an overwhelming advantage across the board in this game. We even have the advantage of playing our last game just an hour's bus ride away, while they played in Corvallis, Oregon just 48 hours ago. While Purdue struggled offensively on Saturday and lost, mostly because of a lack of movement, the Boilers should be able to sleepwalk through this one and still win comfortably.

If this is anything less than a 20-point victory tonight with the walk-ons playing big minutes it is a disaster.