Seth Davis on Marquette

[StillAWarrior]

Seth had this to say:

Who is this year's Florida?

Many people forget that when the NCAA tournament began last season, the Gators were ranked 11th in the AP poll. If you're looking for a modestly ranked team that has the chops to make a similar surge to the crown, you could do worse than No. 14 Marquette. The Golden Eagles dropped their first two Big East games to Providence and Syracuse, but they have since rebounded with six straight wins, including a 77-74 overtime victory at then No. 6 Pittsburgh on Jan. 21. With a trio of speedy guards, led by dynamic 5'11" sophomore point guard Dominic James, Marquette has the ability to create mismatches regardless of whom it plays.

[muwarrior87]

Davis is confusing me, a few games ago, i think it was the Pitt game, he said we were extremely unmatched and had a very slim chance of winnng. Now he's praising us as this years Florida?! I'll take the praise cuz i think our team is well deserving but it's kind of annoying when everyone thinks we cant win a big game and then says we're a great team to make a run come tourney time...oh well, gotta get used to it til we can prove ourselves year afterr year i guess.

[spiral97]

mind you.. last time he praised us we lost to NDSU (he said we were in his final four bracket)... so be careful what you wish for!

[Big Papi]

Seth is quite the waffler.  He predicted us as a potential darkhorse for the final four.  Than he states that are ceiling is low during the West Virginia game.  Than he bashes us a bit in the Pitt game only to nominate us as a darkhorse contender for the title. 

[muwarrior87]

The way the year has been going so far i'd rather have him look down on us, wouldn't be surprise after our next loss if he says we'll be the 4th seed in the tourney that gets knocked out early.

[Wade for President]

Yeah, Seth does waiver quite a bit....but at the end of the day he gives more great praise to MU then anyone else in the media (maybe next to Bilas). 

Hmmmm...and they're both Dook grads. 

[MarquetteBallin]

This year's Florida is a little bit ridiculous. Yes, we have quick guards who are tough to match-up against. But guess what, Florida had three guys taller than 6'9 in Horford, Brewer, and Noah...all of whom are extremely versatile and virtually impossible to match-up against. Athletic big-men are much tougher to defend than athletic guards. Not only that, they had Humphrey and Green who are lights-out shooters. The first team we run into in the tournament with good guards, we will get beat. I see us as maybe a Sweet 16 team, but any farther than that will be shocking. It's also the same reason why Providence will be a tough match-up for us, when we face decent guard-play, we can run into trouble because our big men are not good enough to carry us, nor do we have a shooter that can just go off and win the game for us.

[MUFanInGreenBay]

MarquetteBallin, you couldn't have said it any better. Florida last year(this year as well) is much more talented than we are. I mean we have one legit big man in Barro. And even he looks shaky sometimes. No way can we win a championship with that. It's near impossible. Just can't compete against the elite teams without more legit depth in our froncourt. I say sweet 16 is possible, but after that any win would be icing on the cake. Teams like Florida can beat you in any type of game, and they can survive below average shooting performances becasue their such a balanced team that does so many other things well. MU on the other has a hard time winning if their shots aren't falling especially in a half court game. We have no post-up threat to dump the ball to for a high percentage basket when were struggling to make shots from the perimeter. These teams like Florida have not only one, but two or three guys they can do that with. When you look at MU FF run in 2003 they actually had a very balanced team that could beat you in many ways. That's why they got to the FF. This current MU team IMO just doesn't have enough. I still love them, and will enjoy every game the rest of the way. This year I just want to get some wins in the NCAA tourney. We haven't had a win in it since 2003. This national championship talk is going way overboard. I think Seth Davis just wrote that to give back some love to MU after he said they had no chance of beating Pitt at their place. I mean how can one week he think we can win a national championship, and a week and a half earlier he not think we can beat Pitt at their place.

[mu03eng]

I'm a little surprised by your comment Ballin' about running into a team with good guards beating us.  I think the team has proven in their wins so far, especially the Pitt game, that you have to have REALLY good guards to beat ours.  Pitt had their vaunted ball pressure that was suppose to slow us and nothing slowed down the guards until we slowed ourself down.  None of our losses were because the other team did anything to shut down our guards, our guards took themselves out with poor shooting or overall unforced poor play.

Now I'm not saying that we would beat Florida, I think that will be damn near impossible for any team this year.  However, a couple of things to keep in mind:
1. Seth Davis is not saying our players and play is like Florida last year, he is saying that we could be in a similiar situation....respected but not anticipated to make a big splash.
2.  How many teams with there be in the tourney that can run with our team?  Remember most years you tend to get teams advancing who have upbeat tempos because the grind wears down teams in the long run more who play slow.  ie pressure D teams and fast breaking teams as the tourney go along are more likely to win than lose as they are use to the pace and have the conditioning.
3.  If we hold to a 3 seed and the top teams state relatively stable then we would be relatively "protected" against having to go up against the likes of UCLA, Florida, or Ohio State.  Wisconsin and ourselves would most likely be seeded in the Midwest and I much prefer a Wisco rematch than those other three teams.
4.  I think a NC would be a shock of a life time but I wouldn't put at least an elite eight run past this scrapy team.  I will have to wait and see on the Pitt return game and how we handle Georgetown

[MonsterWebWarrior]

I'm sorry, but if a tourney game comes down to the guards matchup, I'm taking our guys every time.  How many teams have 3 (4 with Cube) guards that can outplay our guards?  There may be 1 or 2, but that's it.  There might be 1 guard on an opponent that may be better than all 3 we have (aka Alando Tucker), but we'll always have 3 that are better than their 3.  Look at what we did with Louisville, WVU and Seton Hall.  Louisville has been on fire ever since they switched to their 3/4 guard lineup, but we took care of them pretty decently on their home floor.  I think Louisville is pretty underrated right now, but that's just my opinion.  We practically toyed with both WVU and Seton Hall.  I'm always licking my chops when I see that a team is guard oriented.  I'm scared of teams with multiple athletic big guys. That's what we don't have.  Stiffs like Gray we can run out of the building, but get a couple athletic guys in there, and we don't have 2 bigs that can contain 2 guys at one time.

[MarquetteBallin]

To continue on with the Florida analogy, keep in mind they started something close to 18-0 and were ranked in the top 3 until they hit one tough stretch of road games and lost a few close games to good teams (i.e. @Tennessee, @Alabama, @ South Carolina). They were undefeated outside of conference and did not lose a game until the very end of January. Think of the struggles we have had this year. I'm not here to bash on us, I think we're having a great year and we have a shot to win the Big East, I just think it's a bit ridiculous to compare us to the outrageously talented Gators of last year.

[Marquette84]

To continue on with the Florida analogy, keep in mind they started something close to 18-0 and were ranked in the top 3 until they hit one tough stretch of road games and lost a few close games to good teams (i.e. @Tennessee, @Alabama, @ South Carolina). They were undefeated outside of conference and did not lose a game until the very end of January. Think of the struggles we have had this year. I'm not here to bash on us, I think we're having a great year and we have a shot to win the Big East, I just think it's a bit ridiculous to compare us to the outrageously talented Gators of last year.

I think many are taking this exercise a bit too literally.

Florida was not viewed as a national championship contender on Feb 1 last season--frankly, they weren't a contender when the NCAA tournament started.

Those "outrageously talented Gators" were sitting at 4-2 this time last season, and had just one top 50 non-conference win--and that was against Syracuse--a team that didn't even finish in the top half of the Big East.   

Davis' point isn't that MU looks like a national champion on paper right now--of course neither did Florida at this point last season--UConn and Villanova and Duke were the favorites. 

Prior to the SEC tournament, Florida was ranked 17th in the AP, and 14th in the ESPN poll. 

Davis' is simply trying to find the dark horse teams beyond the favorites that might be able to put a string of wins together in March--just like Florida did last year against the "outrageously talented" Huskies, Wildcats, Bruins, Tigers, etc.