66-55.
A W is a W is a...
GO MARQUETTE!
undefeated!!
sorry, but .... bleeech.
:P
I know that's it is early in the year, but it's early for a 'university' like Utah Hidden Ranch Valley State U at Crater Lake State Park as well.
Our perimeter D was sooooooo soft in the first half.
Again, a lesser team pushes us--- goes to a zone, and we hit the brakes.
If this is how we play against IUPUI-EIOU and some indy school out west somewhere who just lost to, gulp, Boise, how are we going to play come big boy time?
our talent and athleticism in these 2 games barely held serve to 'heart.'
I fear a rough time against an OKL State or the like in HI.
of course, hitting better than what 30% of our shots in the first half will certainly do wonders.
go team.
Burke had a good game but I think the difference maker was LAZAR HAYWARD. He was the only one in the 2nd half who had a clue what to do against the zone. The guards were just tossing up threes as usual. Hayward figured out that to beat a zone you need to flash around the free throw line and roam the baseline, he made a killing against that zone. By shooting threes against a zone MU is playing the tone that the defense dictates, but that will not cut it against 3/4 of the teams we play this year. Kudos to LH on working on the finer points of the zone offense.
Quote from: TVDirector on November 12, 2007, 09:52:07 PM
If this is how we play against IUPUI-EIOU
I understand where you're going, but at least IUPUI destroyed UI-South Bend 96-61 today.
Quote from: TVDirector on November 12, 2007, 09:52:07 PM
Our perimeter D was sooooooo soft in the first half.
Soft isn't the word I'd use -- to me they seem waaaay too overaggressive. At least twice this game we had players trying for the steal, miss and leave a wide open UVS(U?) player. MU
should be good and athletic enough to just play in front of their men and force contested jumpers all game (while grabbing the first rebound) rather than trying for a steal every damn possession.
This was a rather uninspiring contest, outside of Burke's performance. I liked how the announcers tried to paint the 'close-ness' of these first two games as a GOOD thing. That was rather funny.
All that negativity being said... they won, and we certainly aren't the only top 25 team that's playing these small schools close. I'm also (quietly) optimistic about Burke -- he has stepped up and completely outplayed Ooze. At the very least it looks like he can rebound a bit and play an average (or better) post-defense.
"If this is how we play against IUPUI-EIOU and some indy school out west somewhere who just lost to, gulp, Boise, how are we going to play come big boy time?"
Do we really have to do this every year? Good teams struggle early every year and MU is no exception. UNC won a national title 2 years ago and lost their opener to UC Santa Barbara.
Seriously, can you all spare us the, "if we play like this against no name state, how are we going to play against Duke," posts?
Our D wasn't the problem, our offense was it seemed. Horrid shooting in the first half--mainly on rushed shots. McNeal (2-12) and Wes (0 pts.) just weren't on but did it on defense. Burke's performance was a good sign. Cubes is vastly improved. It looks like Ooze needs to start to get into the flow. We gave up and had 17 offensive rebounds. DJ really seemed to control the game and flow on both ends. I liked TC starting dCube and Lazar in the second half. We are still rushing shots too early in our sets, but that will come. Not pretty but a win.
Quote from: MUSF on November 12, 2007, 10:41:56 PM
"If this is how we play against IUPUI-EIOU and some indy school out west somewhere who just lost to, gulp, Boise, how are we going to play come big boy time?"
Do we really have to do this every year? Good teams struggle early every year and MU is no exception. UNC won a national title 2 years ago and lost their opener to UC Santa Barbara.
Seriously, can you all spare us the, "if we play like this against no name state, how are we going to play against Duke," posts?
nope.
call 'em as I saw 'em tonight.
I wouldn't say we struggled- the guys played hard... D was good, especially late.
soft perimeter D probably is the wrong word, but they had loads o' 3 looks ---
a lesser team got the loose balls in the paint/rebounds...
if you got a #11/12 tag on you, you've got to live up night in/night out.
these last 2 games, we haven't lived up.
hoping that changes way out west.
we've also had a tendency of playing down to our opponent. to those posters worried about what we will do against a team like Duke, I refer you to last season. Some very bumpy "cupcake", in fact, we almost lost a game earlier in the CBE that would have meant we would have never played Duke, then we come out against TT and Duke and play up to the level we can and make them relatively one sided games. I suspect this trend will continue, however unfortunate that may be.
This game was pretty much what I expected. Like others have posted, we tend to play down to our competition in our non-conference tilts.
I am a bit troubled by the early season showings by Ousmane. He doesn't look like he's giving any type of effort, offensively or defensively. The only spark I saw out of him was when he got t'd up for getting in #23's face after some unnecessary extra curricular activity. Is Ouse pouting in reaction to coming off the bench? I wonder what's going on? We definitely need more than 0 points and 4 fouls from him.
Feed the ball to Matthews and Lazar! These two by far have the best shot selection on our team. They take what is given to them, and regularly finish when given the opportunity. I'd like to see more touches for both of them.
Quote from: reesiecup210 on November 13, 2007, 12:53:31 AM
Feed the ball to Matthews and Lazar! These two by far have the best shot selection on our team. They take what is given to them, and regularly finish when given the opportunity. I'd like to see more touches for both of them.
A great site to analyze this type of information (shot selection/offensive efficiency) is Ken Pomeroy's. It's probably been linked to before, but here is his 2007 Marquette page for individual and team stats.
http://kenpom.com/sr.php?team=Marquette&y=2007 (http://kenpom.com/sr.php?team=Marquette&y=2007)
It shows that Wes has the best offensive efficiency rating of the three amigos, while Fitz and Cubillan are ridiculously efficient when they are on the court. Cubi, because he was insane from 3 (42%), and Fitz because his Field Goal % was outlandish both from 2 and 3. He shot 62% from 2 point land, and 42% from 3!
It's good to see Burke showing up but I'll wait to see if he can do it consistently before i jump on the bandwagon. I sure hope Ooze looses whatever is bothering him and helps contribute because if we can get about 10 pts, and 10 reb combined from those 2 I think we'd be a fairly dangerous team.
I watched the first game and although JM is playing aggressively I was disappointed to see how he shot in last night's game. For having played several games before our "first" 2 games we sure seem sloppy at times. Our defense is pretty good but after busting our humps on the perimeter for about 30 seconds we seem to loose a guy and he spots up for an open J. I hope we end up meeting duke in the finals because that game will be a true measuring stick. I watched them play New Mexico St last night and they are very similar to us. They lack any inside presence and are very guard oriented. (Unfortunately I think they shoot better from the perimeter than us)
Looking at the box score, I saw that DJ only had one assist. As a whole the team had 13 assists and 11 TOs. I can understand the TOs but can any one tell me why the assists (especially from DJ) were so low last night?
Quote from: 1990Warrior on November 13, 2007, 07:52:14 AM
Looking at the box score, I saw that DJ only had one assist. As a whole the team had 13 assists and 11 TOs. I can understand the TOs but can any one tell me why the assists (especially from DJ) were so low last night?
There was a lot of standing around, just passing with no one looking to shoot, and then eventually one of them would decide to drive and do something on their own. Not much team basketball. Plus, when DJ did try to pass the ball the shooting was so abysmal that it didn't matter.
Quote from: bma725 on November 13, 2007, 08:02:20 AM
Quote from: 1990Warrior on November 13, 2007, 07:52:14 AM
Looking at the box score, I saw that DJ only had one assist. As a whole the team had 13 assists and 11 TOs. I can understand the TOs but can any one tell me why the assists (especially from DJ) were so low last night?
There was a lot of standing around, just passing with no one looking to shoot, and then eventually one of them would decide to drive and do something on their own. Not much team basketball. Plus, when DJ did try to pass the ball the shooting was so abysmal that it didn't matter.
Thats what I was worried about - thanks.