The 2011 NCAA basketball season is coming to a close as postseason tournaments wrap-up over the next few days. The most notable are the 2011 Final Four and the 2011 NIT Championship, but the 2011 CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament will also be wrapping up with a Bay Area participant. The 2011 CIT Championship game will feature the Santa Clara Broncos facing the Iona Gaels in New Rochelle, New York. The game will tip off at 5:00pm pacific on Fox College Sports.
ESPN ran over 10,000 simulations of the game and the end result was an average score of Iona 78.9 – Santa Clara 70.2. The Gaels won 74.5% of the matchups. Given Iona is a 9 1/2-point favorite tonight, it’s not surprising the simulations have the Broncos losing most of the contests. Iona won “big” (10+ points) 48.1% of the time and “close” (4 or less points) 11.3% of the time. Santa Clara won big 8.4% of the time and close 9.2% of the time. I’m a little surprised the Broncos won big almost as frequently as they won close.
In the simulations leading Broncos scorer Kevin Foster was scoring 23.6 points per game, with the next leading scorers being Marc Trasolini with 13.8 points and Evan Roquemore getting 12.7 points. One of these guys will likely need to hit at least 30 points if the Broncos are going to spring the upset.