ESPN experts just called us overrated - Monday, we will find out.
Jay Williams said that Buzz Williams is coach of the year so far.
Doug Gottlieb said we are overrated for #10 in the Nation.
(//)
Overrated at #10? We'll be rated higher than #10 by the time the game starts!
Too bad UConn won tonight but I have a good feeling about Monday. We're expected to lose this game... we have nothing to lose. Take care of Shrek and we'll be in a good position. Let's let it all hang out... as my old coach used to say... balls to wall!
If these seniors are worth more than 1 NCAA win over the last 3 years, we will take care of business Monday. I hate to make it this black and white, but we need this win.
I'd call Gottlieb overrated but everyone seems to agree he's worthless. Well unless he has someone elses credit cards.....
Quote from: LastWarrior on January 25, 2009, 12:06:54 AM
Overrated at #10? We'll be rated higher than #10 by the time the game starts!
Too bad UConn won tonight but I have a good feeling about Monday. We're expected to lose this game... we have nothing to lose. Take care of Shrek and we'll be in a good position. Let's let it all hang out... as my old coach used to say... balls to wall!
I would argue that we just need to keep Shrek at his average or below, (Burke seems to be good at limiting, but not shutting down the other team's big). We just to make sure McNeal gets into Doobie boy's jock strap once he walks onto the floor and blankets him the whole game. Contest his shots and he will miss just like against UConn. I just hope the other guys can keep once of the other ND players from having a career night on us.
I think Gottleib is right. We really have yet to beat someone we shouldn't have, especially on the road. The tough part of the schedule is coming up. We'll see how worthy we are of our ranking soon enough.
If we can contain or limit Shrek then we will win the game
Shrek will get his. If Mcalarney is contained like last night, MU wins.
I say let Shrek have the game of his life. Keep everyone else incheck and we win. One great player cannot beat very good, boardering on great players.
I think being ranked # 11/10 is great - but as said above, we ahve not yet been tested with high quality opponents. Granted, we did what we had to do so far. All good. But the meat is ahead. The game agaisnt ND is a must for us. How would it look it we lose to a 3-4 BEast team? Not good. Beat them, and we may not get a lot of props, but we beat them. And then we are 7-0.
Respect? Yes. Sure. But I think it is a negative repect - if we don;t beat ND, we are disrespected adn everyone says "see, over-rated." If we win, we beat a 3-4 record team in the BEast. So the best thing to do is crush them. LOL - I would love to see that. But any kind of win is a good win. Let's beat ND!
GO MARQUETTE!
Monday is not about respect. It is about beating ND.
You don't play for respect, you play to win. You don't find respect or even seek it, respect finds you after you have accomplished the task at hand.
I like our schedule. We get to build momentum, moving up a step at a time. We had some good home wins and some good road wins against teams we should beat. Now we are in the 50-50 part of our schedule with a wounded upper echelon opponent in their house as well as ours. Then we go on a 3 game roadtrip of very winnable games, but also very losable. MU takes care of business with one loss in all of that then we are sitting pretty going into the final five. As of right now, I predict MU going 2-3 in the final five.
My initial conference pick was 11-7, I now revise it to a strong 13-5 trending to 14-4.
Quote from: downtown85 on January 25, 2009, 05:13:34 AM
I would argue that we just need to keep Shrek at his average or below, (Burke seems to be good at limiting, but not shutting down the other team's big). We just to make sure McNeal gets into Doobie boy's jock strap once he walks onto the floor and blankets him the whole game. Contest his shots and he will miss just like against UConn. I just hope the other guys can keep once of the other ND players from having a career night on us.
agree with most of that. James needs to be on McAlarney though. He's been our best shutdown defender this year.
Quote from: Badgerhater on January 25, 2009, 10:45:00 AM
Monday is not about respect. It is about beating ND.
You don't play for respect, you play to win. You don't find respect or even seek it, respect finds you after you have accomplished the task at hand.
Badgerhater is 100% right. It's all about the W. ND has 4 losses already. Tomorrow's game is critical for them and they know it. Conn made only 7 fouls against the and ND only had 4 foul shots. The Irish offense consists of Harangody and perimeter shooters. James on McAlarney and McNeal on Jackson should be the key. Their big guy will get his 20+ but we can't allow ND to get on a 3 point run. I hope Buzz is willing to use his TOs to good use if that happens. We seem to be allowing too much dribble penetration lately and that's our Achilles heel. I don't see them breaking us down off the dribble. This game is very winnable if we don't try to get into a 3 point contest and we get to the line.
If the Zebras call the game like they did Saturday we should be OK. Hope Hightower is officiating somewhere else.
I think we will win Monday. Even with the win, I do not believe we are really a top 10 team.
Let Gody get his, hold the rest of the team to <40 and we win. Not about respect, about stockpiling W's before the slog at the end. If we get the W on Monday and beat G-town at home on Saturday, then the #10 ranking is legit.
Georgetown just lost at Seton Hall. Both Georgetown and Notre Dame are on a downward spiral.
Time to kick them both while they are down.
It is the time of separation in the BE between the elite and the rest. Time to put ND and GU solidly in the rest category.
By no means can we declare the game against ND as "must win." Would it be a nice win? Sure. Is it a "must win" for ND? Quite possibly. The way I see it is that to compete for a league title, we need a split in the Georgetown/ND games, and then to beat South Florida and DePaul. That would put us at 9-1 in conference heading into our final eight games. From there, we only have two games against weak opposition (Seton Hall and St. Johns). Win those two, and hope for 4-2 amongst the brutal part of the schedule. That would get us to 15 wins and might get us a title. Drop an unexpected game or two, and we might still have a good shot for a top 4 seed in the BE tourney. I would be quite content with either outcome.
It is a must win if we want to get a top four seed in the NCAA tourney. It is a must win if we want to finish in the top 4 in the Big East. It is not a must win if you are happy with 6th to 9th seed in NCAA tournament.
i think we can all agree that W > L
to quote liz lemon, "... a duh"
iDK, this will be a tough game. It doesn't matter what the record is, we all know that ND has the potential for brutality, same for G-Town, etc. I consider any BEast team a potential hazard. I will surely be happy for a W tomorrow.... but I am not acting entitled for it, either.
Thread hijack! http://www.muscoop.com/index.php?topic=11859.0 (http://www.muscoop.com/index.php?topic=11859.0)
Do you hate UCONN or ND more?
Quote from: bilsu on January 25, 2009, 05:49:57 PM
It is a must win if we want to get a top four seed in the NCAA tourney. It is a must win if we want to finish in the top 4 in the Big East. It is not a must win if you are happy with 6th to 9th seed in NCAA tournament.
This is a hardly a must win for us to finish in the Top 4 in the league. Sooner or later we are going to lose. Every game is not a must win. So far we have won every game we have expected to win. This game wouold be a nice win, but it is not critical for MU. It is however, critical to the Irish. They do not want to drop to 3-5.
The Irish are going to bring everything they have tomorrow.
Quote from: 79Warrior on January 25, 2009, 07:26:39 PM
This is a hardly a must win for us to finish in the Top 4 in the league. Sooner or later we are going to lose. Every game is not a must win. So far we have won every game we have expected to win. This game wouold be a nice win, but it is not critical for MU. It is however, critical to the Irish. They do not want to drop to 3-5.
The Irish are going to bring everything they have tomorrow.
Yeah... what you said. come on, "If you ain't first, you're last..." right?
I am just dreading whenever we get a conference loss.... everyone will be voraciously vexed....
Quote from: 79Warrior on January 25, 2009, 07:26:39 PM
This is a hardly a must win for us to finish in the Top 4 in the league. Sooner or later we are going to lose. Every game is not a must win. So far we have won every game we have expected to win. This game wouold be a nice win, but it is not critical for MU. It is however, critical to the Irish. They do not want to drop to 3-5.
The Irish are going to bring everything they have tomorrow.
This sure puts a lot pressure on ND and our seniors are cool customers.
I don't think we should be repeating the critics claim that we haven't beaten anyone. Granted we haven't played Pitt, UConn and Louisville, and those are emerging as the toughest three for us. But when he was also rattling off that we hadn't played G'town (I'm sorry, we torched WVU and they torched G'town), Syracuse, who just lost as well, who cares. We are better than those teams. On top of that we won two on the road - which Seton Hall again proved today is no gimme'. I think we are No. 8 in both polls tomorrow (I think Louisville leap frogs us in the AP as well, but hope I'm wrong). If ND beats us it is because they shoot out of their minds on 3-pointers, like they did in their one narrow, lucky win against us last year against two times we ran them out of the gym. We need to finish in the top 4, and right now, everyone in the league except Pitt-UConn-L'ville are THREE losses behind us, except Providence who is two losses behind us but lost the head-to-head on their court. We are going to eventually lose a couple in this league, but we've created a margin of victory. Notre Dame is not a must win, but we are clearly a better team and beating them on their home court clearly makes us part of a Big 4 so far in the conference. As for not beating anyone we weren't supposed to, I think WVU is going to beat everyone but the top 4 this year, and we have now beaten three ranked teams - it's just that we knock them out of the Top 25 when we beat them.
Run Forrest Runnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!
Make Harangoofy run all night and he'll be hanging onto his shorts by halftime.
Our team gets no respect. Seton Hall beat G'Town and it means nothing. Let's beat ND G'town Pitt and Louisville and we will make them apologize
Do any of you honestly think we're the 10th best team in the country? We haven't beaten a top 50 team outside of Milwaukee yet. In fact we got smoked by double digits both times we played a top 50 team outside of Milwaukee, although we all know the Tennessee game was closer than the final score. (I consider a top 50 team to be a team who would get at large consideration for an NCAA tournament berth.)
So I certainly can understand why people think we are overrated. We are a nice team, but we are probably somewhere between 15 and 30. At the beginning of the season I thought we were about an 7/8 seed in quality and I thought we'd be 17-2 and 6-0 at this point of the season on our way to an 11-7 Big East finish.
Quote from: CTWarrior on January 26, 2009, 08:01:04 AM
So I certainly can understand why people think we are overrated. We are a nice team, but we are probably somewhere between 15 and 30. At the beginning of the season I thought we were about an 7/8 seed in quality and I thought we'd be 17-2 and 6-0 at this point of the season on our way to an 11-7 Big East finish.
That makes sense, and I find it difficult to disagree...the problem as I see it is for that to be true, you have to come up with 20 or so teams that are clearly better than MU. Honestly I have a hard time doing that.
Wake, Duke, UNC, UConn, UL, Pitt, Oklahoma, probably MSU, maybe Clemson...ummm...ummm....
A win tonight would certainly help settle the argument for me. Much like Providence, this is a bit of a tipping point game that will go a long way in determining if MU is a top of the BE team with UL and UConn, or a middle of the BE team. Not that a loss would say all that much, but a win certainly would.
Quote from: CTWarrior on January 26, 2009, 08:01:04 AM
Do any of you honestly think we're the 10th best team in the country? We haven't beaten a top 50 team outside of Milwaukee yet. In fact we got smoked by double digits both times we played a top 50 team outside of Milwaukee, although we all know the Tennessee game was closer than the final score. (I consider a top 50 team to be a team who would get at large consideration for an NCAA tournament berth.)
So I certainly can understand why people think we are overrated. We are a nice team, but we are probably somewhere between 15 and 30. At the beginning of the season I thought we were about an 7/8 seed in quality and I thought we'd be 17-2 and 6-0 at this point of the season on our way to an 11-7 Big East finish.
wow - Nostradamus went to MU
I think Navin hit the nail squarely on the head.
People get caught up in where we are ranked and what that says about MU. Look at the flip side, and see what it says about everyone ranked below us as well. Is there a team there that makes you think MU can't go toe to toe with?
An MU win tonight is probably, for most, unexpected, and would just solidify an already strong season. I honestly don't think an MU loss tonight says much one way or another about this team. ND is a brutal place to play, MU should go into this knowing they're playing 5 on 8 tonight (I'm throwing the refs as three on the floor for ND). An ND loss tonight and they're in serious big time trouble, even to make the NCAA's. I'd be shocked if MU didn't get anything less than ND's best effort tonight.
Quote from: mviale on January 26, 2009, 11:41:51 AM
wow - Nostradamus went to MU
Hardly Nostradamus. If you go back to the pre-season prediction thread a most people had us pretty much where we are now with considerable slippage moving forward, which makes sense given the back-loaded nature of our schedule.
Thus far we are pretty much where the consensus of MU fans thought we'd be and I don't think that consensus thought of us as a top 10 team, which is basically why I don't think we're a top 10 team now.
I do understand and agree with the argument that it is nearly impossible to figure out who, exactly, the teams are that deserve to be put ahead of us.
This didn't resonate with me until I just went to the ND message board.
If we win tonight, people will still call us over-rated, because we still wouldn't have beaten an NCAA caliber team on the road. ;)
Quote from: CTWarrior on January 26, 2009, 08:01:04 AM
Do any of you honestly think we're the 10th best team in the country? We haven't beaten a top 50 team outside of Milwaukee yet. In fact we got smoked by double digits both times we played a top 50 team outside of Milwaukee, although we all know the Tennessee game was closer than the final score. (I consider a top 50 team to be a team who would get at large consideration for an NCAA tournament berth.)
So I certainly can understand why people think we are overrated. We are a nice team, but we are probably somewhere between 15 and 30. At the beginning of the season I thought we were about an 7/8 seed in quality and I thought we'd be 17-2 and 6-0 at this point of the season on our way to an 11-7 Big East finish.
After the top 7 teams (Duke, UConn, Pitt, Oklahoma, Wake Forest, North Carolina and Louisville) who is definitively better than us?
Everyone else has as many or more warts than us. Are we definitively better than the rest? NO but we have done what we needed to do but at least be in the running.
For comparisons sake lets take a look at some teams that are in the running:
Texas: 2 best wins are at Villanova and at Wisky, both teams we have beat as well but at home. The warts for Texas is 4 losses to ND, Michigan St., at Arkansas and at Oklahoma. If we beat ND tonight, we look better than Texas.
Michigan St.: 2 best wins at Texas and at Minnesota. Good wins on the road but I don't care how improved Northwestern is, they still lost to them at home and got blown out by North Carolina and lost to Maryland. We beat ND tonight and I have a hard time putting Michigan State ahead of us.
Syracuse: good wins against Florida, Kansas and Memphis but they do have 4 losses albeit against very good competition. If we beat ND, I think we are right there with them. Oppps need to edit this, I forgot that they lost to Cleveland State. A very bad loss that we don't have.
Clemson: their 3 big wins are at Illinois, South Carolina and Florida. The Illinois win on the road looks real good but the SEC is weak this year so I don't think S. Carolina and Florida are better than our wins against Villanova, West Virginia or Wisky for that matter.
Butler: One big win at Xavier, next 2 best wins are Northwestern and UAB. You can't definitively put them ahead of us.
And on and on and on. At this point in time we haven't proven that we are or are not a top 10 team but neither has anyone else below us. A win tonight at ND and we take a huge step forward compared to the other teams listed above.