Arkansas State at Purdue: Preview, TV, Time, Odds, Etc.

The third game in five days is, on paper, another tune-up game and probably the easiest of the three. Arkansas State is at least a slightly larger program than North Florida or IPFW, but they are still a team we should be able to cruise past.

Arkansas State has played perhaps the fewest games of any school in Division I so far this season. That is why they are ridiculously low on the RPI. While this is Purdue's 10^th game already, Arkansas State has only played four games so far, and just three against Division I competition. They lost to Tennessee-Martin and Pat Knight's Lamar before beating winless Central Arkansas and non-DI Bellhaven.

That is a bad, bad schedule. Lamar's only D-I win was over ASU 63-58. Tennessee-Martin will never be confused for Duke, either. Arkansas State plays a ridiculously weak schedule with only Georgia State, a conference opponent, currently in the top 50 of the RPI.

The bulk of the scoring comes from three players:

Anthony Livingston - The 6'9" sophomore is averaging 20.5 points per game. He is shooting the ball extremely well at 63.8% from the field and 60% (6 of 10) from three. He is also a strong rebounder at over 7 per game.

Cameron Golden - Golden is a 6' guard that is also a good three-point shooter at over 41%. He is averaging 15.5 points per game and he dishes out 4.5 assists per contest.

Sean Gardner - The 6'5" sophomore swingman averages 14.5 points per game and is shooting 47.8% from three. He is 52.4% from the field and he rebounds well at 5.5 per game.

Given what North Florida did to us from long range we should be very concerned about this team's three-point shooting ability. As a team they are shooting better than 40% from long range, but their scoring, especially their three-point shooting, is ridiculously skewed to the three guys above. They have made 30 threes as a team, but these three guys have hit 29 of them. The rest of the team is 1 of 12 from long range.

Livingston especially could be a difficult player to defend. He has some very good size on the perimeter at 6'9" and he is going to drive out either Vince Edwards or the Hammons/Haas duo to defend him. Fortunately, he is the lone player with size we need  to worry about defending.

This is pretty much a three-man team. Purdue's versatility should be able to pay huge dividends in this one, and as long as we can successfully remove one of the three there won't be too many problems. Our biggest concern should be defending the three and preventing them from keeping the game close by going bonkers from deep. They don't have a single player that can match the Haas/Hammons duo in the middle at all, so expect a big game from the two big men.

Some have complained as to why we're playing a game like this, but I have no problem with it. We need tune-up games and since we're clearly not above dropping a game like this (Cough, NORTH FLORIDA!, Cough) a tune-up game isn't bad. The non-conference schedule has plenty of heft with five power 5 conference teams plus a solid BYU team. We're always going to have an ACC opponent, Butler or Notre Dame, 2-3 Power 5 teams in an early season tournament, and one other team like Vanderbilt as a home and home, so I have zero problems with scheduling some cupcakes likes this. Just don't choke like Saturday.