BricksIt Weekly
Upset of the week
The upset belongs to Northern Illinois. The league belongs to Wright State.
In their first Horizon season, the Huskies won at Dayton as 19.5-point underdogs. The Raiders, meanwhile, are 3-0 and the second-best team in all six of our conferences.
By the Hardwood Bricks desk
Nobody in the six conferences we cover has pulled off anything like what Northern Illinois did last weekend. The Huskies, in their first season in the Horizon League after leaving the MAC, walked into UD Arena as 19.5-point underdogs and walked out with an 81-76 win over Dayton. Two days earlier they had lost by 19 at Tulsa. Four days later they beat Clarke by 39. November is like that.
Our model noticed, and it didn't move much. Northern Illinois sits 253rd nationally, about where it started. One brilliant night counts, but so do the other three games. The next two tests tell us whether Dayton was a door or a fluke: at Bellarmine on Saturday, which the model calls a 78-77 coin flip, then at Marquette on Wednesday.
The steadier story is in Dayton's backyard. Wright State is 3-0 and has won by almost 22 points a game. The Raiders beat Air Force 102-71 and Florida Atlantic 97-71 at the Nutter Center, then won 76-68 at Toledo as an 11-point favorite. The model has them 48th in the country. Of the 67 teams Hardwood Bricks covers, only New Mexico rates higher.
Behind them, the league is a crowd. IU Indy is 3-0, but two of those wins came by one point and four. Green Bay won at St. Thomas. Milwaukee won at Indiana State by exactly the closing number. Nobody else has separated, and half the league has spent the first week cashing checks in power-conference gyms.
Wright State goes to Samford on Friday night, and the model has the Raiders by nine. If they keep winning road games by nine, the Horizon has a clear favorite by Christmas.
Oakland's long road
The Golden Grizzlies are 0-5, and all five games came away from home: Michigan, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, Alabama and Boise State. The home opener is Saturday against Northern Iowa at 5 p.m. The model has UNI by six, which means it's a game.
Guarantee games, guaranteed
Saint Louis put 125 on Northern Kentucky. Detroit Mercy scored 32 at Marquette. These are the paychecks that fund the travel budget, and nobody remembers them in March.
IU Indy is living on the edge
The Jaguars are 3-0, with wins by one point (UT Martin, 75-74) and four points (Southern Indiana, 74-70) after a 113-point opener against a non-Division I team. The model has them 257th. They go to Morehead State on Saturday, rated a two-point game.
Circle it
Marshall at Youngstown State, Saturday, 6 p.m., ESPN+. The model has it 80-79 Penguins, the best Horizon home game of the weekend.
By the numbers
The pecking order
Our model's rating for every Horizon team: points better or worse than an average Division I team over 100 possessions. Record alongside.