Turnovers & rebs !

[Murffieus]

McNeal had 7 assists which is good-----and I appreciate his steals and forced TOs yesterday----but the reality is that we aren't going to beat Pitt, GT, Cuse, Ville, and others in the BE by creating TOs-----we're going to have to beat them in the half court game. Now the trey shooting was better yesterday, but remains to be seen whether that was just a rebound off 5 for 23 the previous night or begins what we will need (near 40% trey shooting) going forward.

Also part of the half court game is rebounding----and on that score yesterday when we beat a team by over 40 points-----we were dead even in rebs (30-30). Normally with a point spread like that, we should beat them on the glass by 15-20 rebs!

[Harrison]

I do not disagree with what you say in general.  We must improve in the half court offense to have the type of year we are all hoping for..  Big games and tournament games end up in the half court.  The nice thing is we have about two months to continue to get better while only, worst case, acquiring 2-3 losses.  Come early January you are right but my guess is this team will be infinitely better by then in that area.  But with that said there is absolutely nothing wrong with picking the spots to extend the defense and gain some easy hoops to ease over the half court deficiencies.

Now as far as the rebounding comment..in general you are right but last night was really an anomoly.  First of all until late we had more field goals made than they had attempts.  It is sort of hard to out rebound a team that due to 30 turnovers has not taken many shots.  So i think we actually " out rebounded" them in the sense that they had many more opportunities to collect defensive rebounds than we did.  to add further to my point we absolutely destroyed ISU on the boards and were a free throw iwth 3 seconds left away from losing.

[Murffieus]

Yea, but we had 26 missess and they had 27 misses (about the same because we shot a lot better %55% to 38%)----so each team had equal chance at defensive rebs------we had 10 offensive rebs----they had 8. Against a team like Detroit we should have had more of both (offensive  & defensive rebs).

Can't count on steals and TOs in the BE----they take better control of the ball!

[milkbone]

Did you even see the game John??

[Murffieus]

What difference does it make whether or not Murf saw the game----the rebound numbers I cite above can be located on any number of internet sites! Talking numbers here not stratagy!

[Nukem2]

Ummmmmmmm.Murff has landed on the Scoop.  what else can I say.

[rocky_warrior]

What difference does it make whether or not Murf saw the game----the rebound numbers I cite above can be located on any number of internet sites! Talking numbers here not stratagy!

Ok...numbers.
1st (exhibition) game: Outrebounded Cardinal Stritch 49-34. Forced 24 turnovers to our 18
2nd game: Outrebounded Hillsdale 46-28.  Forced 20 turnovers to our 18
3rd game: Outrebounded Idaho St. 41-33.  Forced 25 turnovers to our 13.
4th game: Matched rebounding with Detroit (30).  Forced 27 turnovers to our 13. 

Looks good for MU.

[RawdogDX]

Please, please tell me that 'murph' refers to himself in the third person in real life.  Does 'murph' have a crew cut and thick glasses as well.  Would 'murph' mind posting a picture so i can get a mental image of him doing so at work?

[Big Papi]

Wow we smoke a team and Murf has to try to come up with a negative spin on something.  We will know a lot more about our team after the Texas Tech and the following game.  If we lose by double digits and lose the rebounding battle by the same double digit margin than yes we might have a rebounding problem but up until now, it is not a problem.

[milkbone]

John are you afraid to answer a REAL easy question. Were you at the Detroit game.

[WashDCWarrior]

I used to post at JS Online, so I'm not real familiar with Murf, but it seems like he's looking objectively and making a point about a part of our game that could use improvement.  It's not easy to do in a blowout win, but needs to be done as we move into more difficult games.  He's not bashing the team, just pointing something out.  Maybe I'll get annoyed with Murf like everyone else seems to be, but without posts like this, the site is just one big circle j.

[StillAWarrior]

I used to post at JS Online, so I'm not real familiar with Murf, but it seems like he's looking objectively and making a point about a part of our game that could use improvement.  It's not easy to do in a blowout win, but needs to be done as we move into more difficult games.  He's not bashing the team, just pointing something out.  Maybe I'll get annoyed with Murf like everyone else seems to be, but without posts like this, the site is just one big circle j.

The dynamic with Murff is very interesting.

On the one hand, if Murff ever posted "the sky is blue today," and then it started to rain, he would continue to insist that the sky is blue.  He's stubborn and it's pretty hard to move him off of his prior position.

On the other hand, if Murff posted, "the sky is blue today" and it was the most beautiful blue sky ever, you'd still have a half dozen people insisting that the sky is not blue, never was blue, and asking Murff why he hates the sky.

Like I said, it's an interesting dynamic.

[dwaderoy2004]

any more problems with our rebounding abilities against a well-coached, big conference team?

[StillAWarrior]

any more problems with our rebounding abilities against a well-coached, big conference team?

I'm not taking Murff's side on this point, and I am very happy with Marquette's performance last night, but you should note that Texas Tech was out-rebounded by Sam Houston State, Gardner-Webb and North Dakota State.  Strong rebounding isn't really their calling card (although they did out-rebound UALR by six in TT's 34-point victory).  This is not a criticism of Marquette's performance -- I'm just saying that it might not be the best indicator of our rebounding strength.

Duke has out-rebounded all of their opponents by a fairly good margin, so tonight's game should be a good test.

[Big Papi]

I thought our rebounding was very good against a very good team that was bigger than us.  Now just imagine when these 6-8 athletic 4s step onto the court in a year.

[mviale]

Murph what happened tonight with Coach K?

[ecompt]

or Bo Ryan or Dick Bennett, blah, blah, blah.

[Tampa Warrior]

Like I said, it's an interesting dynamic.

Indeed 

[BlueBadgerDevil]

Duke has never been a great rebounding team.  We got a little better last year with Shelden Williams, but K likes to sacrifice rebounds in hopes of getting more steals.  We're never good at crashing the boards.