Just back from the Sears Centre, left with us down 14 with 2 minutes to go.
-No need to bring up free throws
-For whatever reason, but MU consistently can not finish near the basket. Since McNeal, James, and Matthews have been at MU, the ability to finish from within five feet has to be less than 50%.
-Couldn't understand why Buzz didn't go zone. Dayton showed you against Auburn that they were poor from the outside. At least show it as a look on one possession.
-MU is ridiculously thin. Watching Buzz's offense up close, there is structure there. The entire key to the offense is the entry to Hayward free throw line extended. Hayward essentially runs the possession from the high post. Hayward almost must play 40 minutes. The Burke/Hazel rotation...ugh. It's painful to look at the MU bench. Butler doesn't look comfortable playing with James/McNeal/Matthews.
-It didn't cost MU the game, but the officiating was awful, horrendous, terrible (pick your adjective).
-For those who weren't in attendance, the Sears Centre game production is as amateurish as anything I've ever seen. High school games have better production.
During halftime, the Chicago Shamrocks dance team came out, did a routine. Came back 2 minutes later, did another routine. There's only about 6 minutes to go, and they announce some musical chairs game, followed by another dance routine! We sat next to the tunnel where MU was coming out, and musical chairs was still going on with 2 minutes left before the end of the half, and Hayward goes "what the f***?"
Other problems included the music operator playing a song for a good 20 seconds into game play, and the absolute funniest thing I've ever seen. At the 4 minute tv timeout, they had the Kiss Cam come up on the jumbotron. For those who weren't there, this was the first time they had any type of jumbotron entertainment at all the entire tournament. The words "Kiss Cam" looked like graphics you'd see on public access. Greatest part of all was the camera shot for the Kiss Cam was a zoomed out pan of about 10 rows across. Never did they have any zoom in/close up of a couple at all. It simply said Kiss Cam the entire time out as the showed a zoom out shot of about 75 people on screen.
-MU's in for a long year it appears.
Dish, you nailed it. I couldn't believe we didn't zone Dayton when we got into foul trouble, let alone come out at the start in it. Lowery ate us up--no excuse. Lazar and our bench were MIA on offense. We are desperately thin off the bench. All these guys need to step up big time. Without a doubt, the worst officiating crew I have ever seen. The reset of the shot clock from 24 to 26 was criminal.
If we play this offense all year, the PG needs to make free throws. The offense was helter skelter and you know MU is in trouble when DJ is dribbling so much. We also need stops on defense--any stop will do. Buzz was very late with some time outs waiting for the TV time out. One time about the 11:00 minute mark he was caught in a five guard set where Dayton was having their way with us. The good news, we won't have this bad a game again this year.
One note of disagreement, the Hard Rox dancers were a highlight--they looked like they came straight over from Heavenly Bodies. They should have been given the extra routine--anything to delay the start of the 2nd half.
I just got back too. I stayed until the bitter end when the Dayton fans chanted "Over-rated"
1) Our free throw shooting is embarrasing; dismal and will cost us games - we missed a ton tonight
2) Very little scoring inside for us - this is not good
3) No interior defense on our part
4) We could not stop # 3 - we put everyone on him and we lost. He drove to teh hoop a zillon times and put up a floater shot and sank most of them. If we had a shot blocker, we should have swatted them down
5) Foul trouble: the officated stunk for sure, but it mostly stunk both ways. We have gotton a lot of fouls in all of our games, and our bench is razor thin. At one point, Buzz turned to the bench to see who he had to put in. Whew
6) Our defense was ok, but they beat us good - they were faster than us, zipped around us like nothing, had anb interior game, and we could not stop them
7) What wa the deal intertionally fouling with almost 6 minutes left down by 10, sending them to the line for the super bonus?
Really, this was like a Dayton home game too - huge Dayton crowd, very vocal. MU crowd was very quiet after the first minute or so.
Very, very disappointing performce by team etc. Don't know how much was coaching, but we stunk it up tonight.
Hopefully we learn from this quickly and do something about it.
Rox dancers were very easy on the eyes, no complaints about the amount of time they had out there. The comedy was just in how poorly timed everything was. That shot clock reset was one of the worst calls I've ever seen. If Homer explained why they overturned it on tv and someone caught it, please let me know.
You also hit on a comment I meant to mention...the amount of dribbling on offense is borderline ridiculous.
One thing that also was frustrating is MU actually did try to take advantage of the foul trouble Dayton got into. James must have initiated some type of contact a good dozen times in the second half with no call. You could tell he, McNeal and Matthews were thrown off by the inconsistency of the officiating. To Dayton's credit, they took advantage of MU's frustrations.
The only thing more pathetic than MU'S preformance on the court was the number of MU fans that showed up for the game. It should have been like a home game for MU but many more Dayton fans at the game than MU fans. >:(
Nice meeting Bilsu, muhoops85, and muuwuwm!
I agree with everyone above but I really think if we made our free throws we would have taken the game despite the crappy play and inconsistent officiating. The missed free throws alone nearly make up for the difference in score and the game would have been played differently had it been closer, I believe. Definitely no intentional fouls at the 6 minute mark!
I wasn't able to record the game as there was no TV coverage in Illinois so I also would like to know the explanation for adding 2 seconds to the shot clock. For those who weren't there or missed it, Marquette was pressing Dayton and it was clear they weren't going to make it over half-court in 10 seconds. Dayton's bench called a timeout as there were 24 seconds on the shot clock. Instead of calling a 10-second violation they decided to just add 2 seconds to the shot clock and make it 26.
As for the game production at the Sears Centre, yikes! For everyone e-mailing Craig Pintens about the U2 entrance song for Marquette also thank him and the Marquette marketing staff for providing entertainment during the timeouts and a good game experience. The tournament's coordinators could have came up with some form of entertainment for the prices they charged.
EDIT: Also to whoever yelled "STILL ANGRY" following the Rox dancers third routine that was awesome and pretty much summed up my feelings on the game.
MUDish----is correct----the key to our offense is the Lazar option off the wide postup----would also like to see Mathews and McNeal used more there.
Zone is not the complete answer (however might have contained better last night)-----with the quicknes we have there is no reason in the world why they can't be taught to play an effective man to man.
I don't think anyone can say for sure, but they added +2 seconds to the shot clock because the refs thought the TO was called at 26, yet the clock guy didn't stop it for 2 more seconds, making it look like a 10 second violation.
Murf, I don't know if anyone else can play Hayward's role in Buzz's offense. At least it doesn't appear as though Buzz has any faith in anyone else thus far in that spot. When Hayward isn't in there, MU seems to completely abandon the high post/free throw line entry.
It looks like it's almost a hybrid Princeton based set. Hayward gets the entry, and then looks for Matthews/McNeal strong side to see if they (Matthews/McNeal) have beaten their man to the basket for a dump off and easy lay up/dunk.
MU has to create offense from their defense, when they don't and they have to run a set they are typically in big trouble. It seems they get to 10 seconds on the shot clock far too often and then DJ does a Meadowlark Lemon impersonation and chucks up a shot. Heaven forbid he gets fouled because he is really weak from the line. I think he gets too caught up in the trash talk and loses focus on the game around him including the "free" throws.
I am having a hard time imagining them playing any worse than they did last night going forward. They looked exhausted for a good part of the game.
They could have worn any color of uni last night and it wouldn't have helped!
my observations:
-my mom forgot to bring her glasses to the game and every few minutes or so she would yell out, " i cant see the numbers on the big screen". to which i had to keep reminding her that the big screen was of very very low quality and not really meant to be read.
-that was the oddest atmosphere for a game. the fact that it was empty and people could literally carry out conversations with people sitting on the other side of the court was interesting.
-When i sat in my seat before the game and realized the dayton fans completely outnumbered us, i texted my friend that this would be the worst game to get upset during, and sure enough it happened.
-also the official soft drink of the Sears Centre is RC Cola. i wasnt even aware that was still in production.
I think the prices had something to due with the poor attendance.
I imagine DePaul might be rethinking their $40 dollar ticket for the MU game right now!
There certainly didn't seem to be a heavy hand agains MU on the officiating end as I watched on SNY.
Unfortunately I was in a in a flu ridden state in the Chicago area and couldn't use my tickets to the game.
I called up right before the game and added the sports package on Directv. It's really a shame how much better SNY's quality is than ESPN Fullcourt for $12 a month vs. a $100 for the season. I really hate ESPN and all their BS. I'm sure everyone is happy in Feb. when they show all their mid major games on ESPN and ESPN2!
Barro's drop in from the baseline doesn't look so bad now? The dribbling was as ridiculous as Jerel's bombs away attitude. It still amazes me how many silly fouls Hayward picks up. We were looking for this guy to be a 3 point shooter coming in and now he is our only scoring threat down low?
This team struggled against larger teams last year due to Hayward's inability to score down low in those games. I don't blame Hayward for having to play out of position and neither does Buzz based upon the fact that he telegraphed before the season that we were undersized. The only way we win in the half court set is if Cubilian or Hayward are hitting 3's. I never thought I would miss Fitz's poor defense and silly fouls.
I think we can play a lot better and that Dayton is a lot better team than they get credit for.
The refs did not skew one way or the other. Dayton clearly outplayed us...but they just were horrible for both teams. Dayton had 7 fouls with like 5 minutes gone in the 2nd half--one a a clean block on a DJ shot. Dayton hand checked the entire first half without a call, then they decided to call it every time down the court. They had to go to replay at one time to figure out who a foul was on--not whether a shot beat the buzzer or a foot was on the line for a trey. I think I counted five times where they had to have a conference to get a simple call right. The worst was the phantom time out by Dayton on a 10 second call. The whistle went off at 24 on the shot clock when Gregory called a time out. The refs reset it at 26 and gave Dayton back the ball. They reset the shot clock but not the game clock. It was like the USSR-USA Olympic game.
Buzz was way out of the box, jawing pretty hard. He refrained from a T as we were trying to make a run. A good crew works well together, but these guys were all over the place.
I watched this horrendous game on SNY also. My thoughts:
1. Agree with everyone on the board: Waaaaay too much dribbling. Our guards did very well when they were penetrating and either dishing or shooting. skipping the ball around the perimeter before McNeal jacks up a contested three isn't a good offense, especially when we get Dayton in foul trouble. We were in the bonus within about 6/7 minutes after the start of each half and we never took advantage of that by continuing to attack their interior and draw fouls.
2. Not that drawing fouls would have matter considering we suddenly can't shoot FTs again.
3. Our bench was embarrasing...I don't know if they ever scored as I turned it off after Lazar fouled out but it was 26-0 in favor of Dayton...someone's got to give us something. Butler and even Mo Acker looked out of place out there, at best, and intimidated at worst.
4. Dayton is a good team. Playing in the A10, they will make some noise come tourney time and I believe they were ranked for most of the year last year. They have a solid front line to include a very physical set of Forwards and they were definitely the aggressor on both ends this game. Their guards aren't spectacular but they get after it and their energy seemed to overwhelm our guys. It's been awhile since we've been the least athletic team out on the court. I felt like I was watching the 2004 team after Travis injured his hand...
I think we are just a good match-up against you guys right now. IMO, not many teams will be able to hang with your guards and not rack up a lot of turnovers. And many teams will not be able to stay on your guards defensively as well. Dayton has very good quickness and defensive ability at the guard positions this year. And with our depth, we can play with a lot of energy in short shifts and that helped tremendously.
I was suprised that we did not turn the ball over much, and I credit the high post passes out near the 3pt line and weave-hand-offs that Brian Gregory constructed into the offense to take the pressure off of our guards. We are atheltic and quick enough that playing pressure defense on our guys will allow them to dribble penetrate. We have a lot of slashers.
I thought your guys are tremendous rebounders for their size, but we have great rebounding as well.
We don't have a big inside presence offensively, but you guys have a hole there too.
So, IMO, the way you guys play matches right up with all of our strengths. I think you guys are going to bounce back from this loss.