I understand that we lost the last two years but the first year we were young and blew an opportunity and the year after McNeal was hurt.
Lets face the facts. Marquette has lost to worse teams and better teams than Marquette have lost to worse teams than Kentucky. So can Marquette lose on Thursday, sure. Do we have a better chance of winning? YES! Big time. Kentucky plays in a pretty weak conference. Georgia, their conference champ, won more games in their tourney than they did in the regular season. Why? The conference is weak. UK does not have Patterson which is big. This is a guard v. guard matchup. We have better guards. We have more guards. 5 UK players put up close to or over 40 minutes against Georgia. They have no depth. MU LOVES TO RUN. They are going to be spent with 10 minutes left. Lets put this into perspective.
I see alot of worry bugs out there but ever tourney team (outside a select few) have a legit reason to worry about losing in the first round. Hell, I have CS Fullerton over WI because I think the Big Ten sucks and I don't buy into the "awesome" WI defense. If you are the slowest offensive team and play in the worst major conference, you are going to have a lower points allowed per game average.
SOOO... MU could lose. Everyone can. But my bet (I am going to Vegas Too) is that MU will win by more than 5 1/2 points.
Peace.
Go Eagles
Look for UK to try and keep the game in the 50's or 60's. If they do, they have a great shot to win. If it goes into the 70's, then MU probably has an 80% chance to win.
It's all going to be tempo, how tight the refs call the game and if we can turn them over.
If you think Fullerton beats UW, then you just don't know much about college BB.
Quote from: 4everwarriors on March 18, 2008, 09:22:29 PM
If you think Fullerton beats UW, then you just don't know much about college BB.
Not the only person I've heard with that pick. Fullerton is a quick guard oriented team (that doesn't necessarily bode well for Wisco: See MU home loss).
Fullerton isn't that bad....athletic kids.
That is what I am talking about... Athletic kids with some guards that can shoot playing against a calapsing defense. Good jump shooting or guards who can break someone down off the dribble could cause problems. PLUS, 11 point spread. I am loving that pick. But I do have that upset in one of my brackets.
Quote from: ErickJD08 on March 18, 2008, 06:11:39 PM
Marquette have lost to worse teams than Kentucky.
Not sure how you get to that conclusion. By the numbers, the worst team Marquette lost to this year was Syracuse (at their place) who was #55 RPI, and #41 pomeroy (which I think is more accurate).
Kentucky is #57 RPI and #61 pomeroy.
Not saying it's a guaranteed win for Marquette. But to date, it would count as our "worst" loss of the season. Nonetheless, I agree, and I think MU will win. Of course, that doesn't mean that it'll keep me from worrying a little bit :)
HA... Great points but you switch UK with Syracuse that night and we lose. I don't like to think it but I think MU threw the game because if you watched it, MU was down by double digits with enough time to make a run and they seemed like they really didn't care. Zero effort. ESPECIALLY, in comparison to their performance in the BET. I have to say that one characteristic of our team is a TON of effort.
Quote from: ErickJD08 on March 18, 2008, 10:53:54 PM
HA... Great points but you switch UK with Syracuse that night and we lose.
You switch Syracuse with Kentucky that night, and in essence, it would be a totally different game. The Syracuse game would have never existed. We could have played KU that night and beat them by 40. I guess that is just some menial philosophy from me. But, KU and 'Cuse are different teams. As discussed before, Syracuse has a very athletic team, and talented, athletic, and tall wing players like Donte Greene. We have always had trouble matching up with these guys because of the size we give up and our shaky interior defense. So, I think if we played Kentucky on that night it would have been a totally different story.
Quote from: ChicosBailBonds on March 18, 2008, 10:27:43 PM
Fullerton isn't that bad....athletic kids.
CSUF is pretty good, but they will bow out in round one (unless Leon Wood makes a comeback) :o
Quote from: ErickJD08 on March 18, 2008, 06:11:39 PM
SOOO... MU could lose. Everyone can. But my bet (I am going to Vegas Too) is that MU will win by more than 5 1/2 points.
Speaking of the line, most oddsmakers now have Marquette at -6. Digger and Dick may be picking Kentucky, but the gamblers like Marquette.
Quote from: ErickJD08 on March 18, 2008, 06:11:39 PM
I understand that we lost the last two years but the first year we were young and blew an opportunity and the year after McNeal was hurt.
Lets face the facts. Marquette has lost to worse teams and better teams than Marquette have lost to worse teams than Kentucky. So can Marquette lose on Thursday, sure. Do we have a better chance of winning? YES! Big time. Kentucky plays in a pretty weak conference. Georgia, their conference champ, won more games in their tourney than they did in the regular season. Why? The conference is weak. UK does not have Patterson which is big. This is a guard v. guard matchup. We have better guards. We have more guards. 5 UK players put up close to or over 40 minutes against Georgia. They have no depth. MU LOVES TO RUN. They are going to be spent with 10 minutes left. Lets put this into perspective.
I see alot of worry bugs out there but ever tourney team (outside a select few) have a legit reason to worry about losing in the first round. Hell, I have CS Fullerton over WI because I think the Big Ten sucks and I don't buy into the "awesome" WI defense. If you are the slowest offensive team and play in the worst major conference, you are going to have a lower points allowed per game average.
SOOO... MU could lose. Everyone can. But my bet (I am going to Vegas Too) is that MU will win by more than 5 1/2 points.
Peace.
Go Eagles
By putting things in perspective you also have to keep things in perspective.
Georgia was the SEC Tourney champ. Tennessee was the conference champ. Georgia won the same amount of games in the tourney as they did in the regular season and I agree that isn't saying a lot for Georgia but they won the SEC tourney by playing 4 games in 3 days, beating UK and Mississippi State in the same day with about 6 hours of rest between games.
UK doesn't have Patterson, true enough. However, they have been without Patterson for the last 13 games. They went 10-3 in those 13 games without him, so UK has learned how to play without Patterson on the floor.
UK doesn't have a lot of depth but they have some. They are not as deep in the 3-4-5 spots as they need to be and foul problems hurt UK a lot.
I wouldn't say that MU has better guards because MU and UK's guards play differently. If you mean that MU has more talented guards, that may be true, we'll see Thursday what happens.
A lot of these perspectives assume a lot of things. Like that MU will control the tempo of the game, that MU's guards will outplay UK's guards, and that MU is in better condition than UK. Perhaps all those things will be proven to be true, and on paper, I agree that MU looks to have a sizable advantage. But the games aren't played on paper and it's a good thing. Otherwise we would just award the NC to North Carolina and that would be the end of it.
Good discussion, I like the banter here.