VCU received some good news in that Melvin Johnson appears that he will be able to play. How effectively remains to be seen, but as a shooter, you’re still going to have to respect his presence on the court. As always, the question when facing VCU is how will you handle Havoc? SFA generally handles the ball well, just a 16.8% TO rate offensively, but if anyone struggles with turnovers on the team, it’s PG Trey Pinkney. The issue is that SFA hasn’t really faced the type of pressure VCU brings this year (except in practices: SFA has the third highest defensive TO rate, behind only VCU and Louisville). Incarnate Word and Northwestern State probably use the most ball pressure besides SFA in the Southland, but it’s really not that comparable, and SFA tended to get a bit flustered whenever Northwestern State would amplify the pressure. Defensively SFA just really harasses guards. They push teams off the three point line and it becomes really unfair when they uses secondary traps with the bigger Parker and Gajic. No team has a larger gap between their average length of offensive possession and how long they defend a possession on defense. Offensively, they’re 342nd in possession length at 20.5 seconds, and defensively they guard the least amount of time in the country at 16 seconds. That being said, they can be exposed inside because of the scheme and the lack of height. VCU really needs Reddic to come out of March hibernation. He went 7-21 in the A-10 tournament. Unfortunately for SFA, I think they’re going to struggle to score. With their lack of height and reliance on guard scoring, they could be in trouble vs VCU. VCU is nearly as good as SFA at taking away the 3, but I think we’re going to see a lot of Parker and Walkup two point jump shots, and not sure that’s the best path to victory, despite the fact I think SFA is able to generally control the tempo. Should be a great game, but I’ll take VCU by the slimmest of margins.