Nova is a scary good team. They have all their cylinders clicking right now, a sick number of weapons. How Wright has them playing, they are a close second to UConn and are a legitimate final four team. Special guards, Cunningham and add Pena and Clark into the mix, damn...
That said, let's f-ing ring out, grab two dubs vs. St.J's and Seton and roll into GTown ready to start the trail of tears final march... one game at a time, boys. One game at a time...
If you think they are going to shoot 60% every day, well... there is something to be said. They are good, but I think we are better. Road games are tough in the Big East for a reason. I think they will lose three more games (that would mean they lose to an 'easier' team). I really think 5 loses will be good enough for the 4th spot.
The tough spot for MU is that we need to win the next two and take care of business at home against two tough teams.
I will say that they are a VERY good basketball team, with few weaknesses. But, we did beat them, and I would highly doubt they shoot 60%+ from here on out...ain't gonna happen. They just hung 100 on Syracuse and us...it's safe to say they're on fire right now.
they are who we thought they were
The comparison you made seems right for the most part. However, whereas you state Nova has the advantages on big guys and more bench, we definitely have better guards. Their guards are probably equal from an offensive standpoint but we have MUCH better defensive guards. The "Two Coreys" don't play that great of "D". Redding and Reynolds are good defenders but those four are not as good as our "Big Three" defensively.
We could look at last night's games and say they are better. We could look at the game in Milwaukee and say we are better. Yes the won by more at their place, but we didn't shoot the lights out at our place (44% FG and 39% 3FG) and still won.
I can't say I agree on the big scorer point, what offensive threat do they have that MU doesn't? They do have a solid bench, good for about 20 points/game. However, I don't think 21 points from Fisher off the bench is an everyday occurrence-- more than doubled his average.
Nova is on the verge of peaking too early. Putting up 100 on two good/great Big East teams is not good for the ego. I think this lights out shooting is going to get to their heads and they are going to come to expect it. What happens when it isn't there? Everyone is so high on them because they shot the out of their minds, they are going to try and become that team.
Even during our game, they had very points from near the bucket. If we played Villanova again the the BE tournament, I would be happy with them taking 75% of their shots from 17' and out.
I'd say Villanova is very much like our team except for the fact that they have a big (Cunningham) that has a great inside game and a shooting range of 18 feet. Seemed like every jump shot he took went in last night. I also didn't realize that Nova got 30 points from their bench...That's ridiculous! They were clearly the better team last night.