Jackets by 4 over Billikens Saturday night

I think that the Jackets will win this game, but come back down to earth (finally) after being forced to slow down by St. Louis. As Red noted below, that's their game plan and they played it to perfection against AZ. I'm sure that Hewitt has provided the gang with a breakdown of THAT game, but here are the keys to me:

The open man: St. Louis will guard the uniform off Elder and Jack, which is a good thing. Can C Moore, Isma'il, and Marvin Lewis take those open jumpers and make them? I'm betting that our first loss will come if they can't because they'll likely get open shots and need to make them count--especially outside.

Fast break on turnovers: St. Louis will NOT let us fast break...we have to force the issue against their defense. This means that we have to create turnovers before they're in the set half-court defense. We've seen the Jackets do a lot of that disruption in big games and they need to do that on Saturday to win.

Our crowd: will Philips Arena be a halfway full cavern, or can we fill the joint? You can't get more hyped up in the press than the Jackets are right now...it's time to go down and support them, so get out there if you're local. A loud crowd would bolster the team if we're in a tight one.

I figure that the final is 74-69 or something like that. Not a lot of scoring in this one.

GO JACKETS!