Game 10: Tennessee
Dec. 15, 2008
Nashville, Tenn. -- Buzz Williams is worried about Tennessee's size, athleticism and depth.
Bruce Pearl is worried about Marquette's guard play.
That's the storyline from both camps in a nutshell heading into tomorrow's big tilt at the Sommet Center here in Nashville. MU arrived in town and headed straight to the arena for practice, while Tennessee was checking into its hotel, and presumably practicing after the Golden Eagles.
While I'll have Williams' thoughts in my preview story for tomorrow, here's what Pearl had to say to my colleague Wes Rucker of the Chattanooga Times Free Press regarding MU's senior guard triumvirate of Dominic James, Jerel McNeal and Wesley Matthews.
“Marquette is returning three 1,000-point scorers. Two of those three guards will be in the NBA for sure. I’m not sure which two of the three, but two of them at least. They are a really, really talented team, particularly in the backcourt.”
“Their guards have played 77 games together. Our guys have played six. That’s not a small difference we’re talking about. We certainly have our work cut out for us.”
Tennessee, by the way, started three guards in its upset loss at Temple -- junior-college transfer Bobby Maze, Cameron Tatum and Josh Tabb. Tabb was apparently a spot start for McDonald's All-American Scotty Hopson, who should return to the lineup Tuesday.
So far, Maze's numbers are looking very similar to James, his counterpart at point guard. He's averaging 9.3 points, 3.1 rebounds, 4.9 assists and 1.6 steals per game.
“It’s hard not to get hyped up playing against a group of guys like that," Maze said of the matchup. "That’s why I came to Tennessee, to play in games like this, in the big spotlight.”
MU will apparently catch a break on Tuesday in that 6-7 forward J.P. Prince was termed by Pearl as "probably doubtful" and likely won't play after spraining his left ankle in practice last Friday.
“It looks like a really bad sprain, and I’m not sure when we can expect him back right now," said Pearl. "That’s tough, because against a team like Marquette with such tremendous experience on the perimeter, we could use him.
“When you take away your second best player, yeah, it makes an impact. And not only that, but another inexperienced guy would obviously have to take his minutes. But if that’s the situation we’re in, we’ll just have to adjust and go from there.”
As far as the matchup issues MU is going to face -- a huge size disadvantage, and a much smaller rotation -- its players certainly aren't going into the game conceding anything.
"We have to do what we do best, and that’s drive, kick, penetrate, play for each other, and get into you defensively," said Matthews. "We can’t let them be comfortable, cast threes and then crash the offensive glass like they’re good at. That takes away from what we’re good at, which is getting up into you, pressuring, making you take shots you don’t want to take.
"The more shots that they take that they’re not expecting, the less chance they’re going to get that offensive rebound and we can go on the other end and do what we do best."
Added McNeal: "I think that’s just going to put more pressure on us to come out and play as a team. We don’t have enough talent on our team to beat them man for man at every position, so that’s just going to put more stress on us to come out and play together and play as more of a team, because that’s going to be the only way we’re going to be able to beat them."
And, finally, James: "I think we’ve got to go right back at them. They’re going to run an uptempo-style game, and obviously that’s the game that we like to play, too. I feel like we’ve got to make the first move and be the aggressor in the game, let them know that we’ve come to play. I feel like that’s the most important thing. Obviously we’ve got to make the trip, they just came off a loss so they’re going to be ready to get back. We’ve just got to go out there and play our game and play within ourselves."
Probably the toughest individual matchup for MU will be 6-foot-7, 215-pound Tyler Smith, who's averaging a team-best 17.4 points per game to go along with 5.9 rebounds and 4.6 assists. He can do a little bit of everything and possesses the size and athleticism on the wing that gave MU fits last year.
So, how do the Golden Eagles slow him down?
"You’ve just got to try to come out and try to make it tough on him every possession. Play unbelievable team defense," McNeal said. "The main thing is guys that are versatile and can go inside-out like that, you don’t want to give them easy looks and let them get going. No wide-open threes or jump shots or whatever.
"When they get going it’s hard to slow them down, because they can do so many things. We know we want to try to prevent him from getting easy early shots, open shots."
This will be MU's first meeting with Tennessee since the Great Alaska Shootout in 2001. The Golden Eagles won that meeting -- a first-round game -- en route to the title.
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