Dook Game

[brewcity77]

Open up as 12 point dogs...that's a lot of points to lay down if you want to take the chalk.

Especially for a team that only lost one game by double-digits last year (Georgetown in BE Tourney), and the rest of our 11 losses were by a combined 37 points.

[Dr. Blackheart]

First four games this year to last...

• MU has 82.6% of their points in the paint or on the line
• Last year, this was 63.0%

That is where our focus will be.  Duke will want to speed up possessions and we will want to slow them down.

Singler vs. Butler...who would you choose?  Singler better at threes...Jimmy is more efficient and gets more FT's.  I like our chances with JFB!

http://statsheet.com/mcb/players/compare?add=kyle-singler&jimmy-butler=2009-2010&kyle-singler=2009-2010&p1=jimmy-butler

This will be a classic inside vs. outside match-up game.  If we don't bring our guards, we are dead.  MU has to jump the perimeter to win.

[Rollout-the-Barrel]

Open up as 12 point dogs...that's a lot of points to lay down if you want to take the chalk.

From a wagering angle, MU seems to do well as an underdog the past couple years.  I'm not sure about MU winning, but may take the points as I would guess the public would be all over Duke in this one.

[willie warrior]

Duke is a 14 point spread favorite. I would put some cash on MU.

[GGGG]

Wow...such a simple concept to not be able to grasp.  There haven't been enough attempts to be able to draw any kind of conclusion or to be overly concerned.  Of course, those that tend to be negative will see things in a negative way. 

If you were talking about players with a history of good three point shooting, then yes you are correct....reverting back to the mean is generally going to occur over the course of time.  Accordingly, I expect Buycks to cool down and DJO to heat up.

The problem is that we have a new group here without a history of good three point shooting like we did last year.  IOW, the mean is different than we have had in previous years. 

And don't give me that "those that tend to be negative" crap.  You seem to be saying "well, we are going to get better since we haven't shot enough," without actually looking at those who are doing the shooting.

[ATL MU Warrior]

If you were talking about players with a history of good three point shooting, then yes you are correct....reverting back to the mean is generally going to occur over the course of time.  Accordingly, I expect Buycks to cool down and DJO to heat up.

The problem is that we have a new group here without a history of good three point shooting like we did last year.  IOW, the mean is different than we have had in previous years. 

And don't give me that "those that tend to be negative" crap.  You seem to be saying "well, we are going to get better since we haven't shot enough," without actually looking at those who are doing the shooting.

Fair enough.  But the fact that we have new players with little D1 history isn't enough for me to say we're going to continue to shoot a poor percentage.  We've got capable shooters...they need time to gel as a unit and learn how to play with each other.  And for what it's worth comparing this year to last year is going to result in a disappointing outlook...not many teams are ever going to shoot the 3 like we did last year. 

[chren21]

I bet the UK vs. Oklahoma game runs over and we are relegated to watching the first couple minutes on espn3.com...  That will be very frustrating.

[Lennys Tap]

If you were talking about players with a history of good three point shooting, then yes you are correct....reverting back to the mean is generally going to occur over the course of time.  Accordingly, I expect Buycks to cool down and DJO to heat up.

The problem is that we have a new group here without a history of good three point shooting like we did last year.  IOW, the mean is different than we have had in previous years. 

And don't give me that "those that tend to be negative" crap.  You seem to be saying "well, we are going to get better since we haven't shot enough," without actually looking at those who are doing the shooting.

I assume you mean Acker, Cubillan and Lazar as our players last year with a "history of good 3 point shooting" going into the season. Acker was a career 32% coming off a 28.8% year. Cubillan's last two years had been 33.6% and 29.4%. Lazar was coming off a 35.8% campaign. So most MU fans were plenty concerned with 3 point shooting going into last year - and justifiably so.

[CTWarrior]

Don't like our chances at all tonight.  Duke's got size and we will have trouble defending them and especially keeping them off of the offensive boards.  Our ball pressure should be neutralized because you're generally not allowed by the refs to steal the ball off the dribble too much from teams run by Coach K (not to mention they've got some pretty good guards).  I remember the loss to Duke a few years back where we hassled Paulus into a few turnovers early so he just started using his off hand to blatantly push away the MU defender on every singe possession with no calls from the officials.

So, they're going to score 80+ points and I don't see how we score enough to keep up with them.  Last year we had a puncher's chance in a game like this if we rained 3's for a good stretch.  Not yet this year.  I think we're roughly 15-20 points worse than them right now, but will clsoe the gap to 10 by the end of the season.  Duke stomps you when they've got you down, too.

I'm a very solid handicapper of college b-ball, but terrible when it comes to Marquette, so hopefully I'm wrong.  The other possibility is that we are much, much better thasn we've shown thus far.

[NavinRJohnson]

While I wouldn't predict a win, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it happens. I do expect that this week the college basketball world meets Vander Blue. His talent and star potential are pretty obvious, and I expect to see a bit of a coming out party the next couple nights.

[MarquetteDano]

That doesn't bode well for us.  To win this game I don't think Marquette can afford more than about 13 turnovers and somehow we have to keep Duke to 33% or less three point shooting.

Funny... we had 14 turnovers and Duke shot 33% from three but it still wasn't enough.  I really didn't think Plumlee would school us like that.