MU in March - Fact or Fiction?

[NavinRJohnson]

1. MU's poor 3-pt shooting will hurt them in the Tournament?

I am leaning Fiction at this point. In Big East games, we rank 6th in the league at 35%. That's not terrible as a team. If you take out the Syracuse and Providence games during a time we were playing our worst basketball and went a combined 8-44, our percentage in BE games would go to 41% - good for second in the Big East. Translation: Since those two games, we are shooting 41% from behind the arc. That's a stretch of 7 games. With three's being made by a variety of players, I don't see us as really being any worse off than any other team. What's more, our ability to get the ball in the lane gives us an advantage over many teams when the 3's aren't falling.


2. Poor FT Shooting will kill us in March?

I see this as fact. Tournament games are almost invariably close, and while I think we have been pretty clutch from the line, especially lately, those points you don't get early in the game count just as much as the ones late. Missing front ends of a 1-1 hurt especially. Too often, when the other team fouls us, it is the equivalent of a turnover. There's time to improve, but this one seems to present a real threat.


3. Our lack of an inside game will hurt us in the tournament?

I think this is a big time myth. We routinely score more points in the paint then our opponent. We may not do it in the traditional sense, but we do it. For the past month or so, as well as earlier in the year, we have been able to score in a variety of ways. From a defensive standpoint, when we run up against the big inside threat, defensive pressure on the perimeter will be key to prevent the ball from getting inside, and we have been effective doing this.


4. Our inability to play against a zone will hurt us in March?

This one as been beaten to death and is a total myth. For MU it is not a function of the defense we are playing against, it is a function of how we play.

[Djgoldnboy]

The only one I agree with is the FT one, but if we can somehow make sure that Wes is the one getting the ball near the end of the game, that should be solved.  He's been solid on the line of late.  Not sure why they didn't try to get it to him near the end of the Provy game when McNeal and DJ were still clanking their free throws.

[Marquette84]

I think the FT issue is a myth as well--in tight games we have generally been able to hit the free throws we've needed to in order to win. Wasn't it the Pitt game where we hit 15 in a row down the stretch?  Weren't there some clutch free throws against USF and Idaho State as well?  As well as down the stretch against Valpo?

Of our 4 losses--UW, NDSU, Syracuse and Providence, I don't see any of them that hung on FT shooting.  In fact, providence was one of our better FT shooting games.  And I don't see that FT shooting was the difference in the other 3 games.

[77ncaachamps]

I must disagree with you on #3. Syracuse just handed it to us. Pitt had Gray but Kendall didn't do much.

I'll happily eat my words if we dispatch Gtown on Saturday. But to me, that's the true indicator if we can truly play well against the bigs.

[Djgoldnboy]

In the WI game, we were 11-18 from the line...we go 15-18 and it's a tie game, or hit 16 of 18 and we have the "W" (not to mention our .394 shooting that game, ouch)....Free throws are exactly that, free points, if we could be somewhere in the 70-80% from our Big 3, it would be very beneficial come March.   

I know they necessarily haven't lost us games yet, but on the other side they have kept a few games closer than what they should have been.  Saturday's game is an example of that.