MU Massively Fails First Test of Year: Dayton Wins 89-75Written by: hilltopper91@gmail.com (Kevin Buckley (aka Hilltopper))
After snacking on 5 cupcakes, Marquette faced its first real competition of the year, facing up against the Dayton Flyers. Buzz Williams' Warriors fell behind in the first few minutes and were destroyed by the A10 Dayton Flyers by 14 points.
MU was out-scored, out-rebounded, out-hustled.
Depending on your prescience, the loss either exposes or confirms Marquette's weaknesses. No production from our 5, terrible shooting beyond the 3-point range (4 for 20=20%), poor defense (giving up 89 points -- the most UD has scored this year.)
Oh, and our bench scored 5 points .. to Dayton's 50. That's 5 to 50. Think about that for a minute.
If you take away Matthew's 14/17 at the FT line, the rest of the team shot 47% from the charity stripe. Forty-Seven Percent. That's drunk Pop-a-Shot-in-a-bar like shooting.
Our bench's 5 was matched by Lazar's 5, who grabbed 8 boards, but fouled out after 24 minutes. If our 5 isn't scoring, and our 4/5 isn't either, we're going to lose. That's not to say Burke and Lazar are the reason we lost. Jerel chucking up 8 three-point bombs and missing 7 isn't going to help. And poor defense is a team effort.
Dayton is no slouch team, of course. But the Big East has at least 10 teams that are as good as Dayton, and they just spanked us.
And someone check my math .. but aren't we 1-3 with those
Baby Blue uniforms? They might look cool, but they've got mighty bad ju-ju.
Smoke 'em if you got 'em. This could be a long season. Is it too late to amend my 25-6 prediction?
Official Box Scorehttp://marquettebasketball.blogspot.com/2008/11/mu-massively-fails-first-test-of-year.html