MU overview as we ride into March

[ski44]

MU overview...

http://www.sportsandpopculturebank.com/muringoutahoya.html

[NYWarrior]

MU overview?

how about 'overreaction'

wow.  the same thing could have been writen after the 0-2 start in conference play.........but 8 wins later, um.  As for 'scraping by' for road wins and 'unimpressive' home wins --- when did style points become important?  gimme the W, anyway anyhow.  And thowing the team under the bus after a road loss to a very good team .... odd given the 8 wins in a row that led up to that, and realizing that MU was essentially down a man with Matthews puking his guts out due to the flu.

The Novak/Fitz comparison -- thanks for pointing out that Dan is not Steve.  "nor does he (Fitz) have the ability to take over a game".  LOL.  No s!%t although I'll take the huge three he hit at Pitt in OT and a handful of others that came at key junctures this year.  Hiting 43% from 3-point range with a modest number of attempts per game indicates that Fitz is an efficient marksman, regardless.

enjoy the ride

[21rooster]

Now I know about one more blog to avoid.  Are you kidding me?  Check the record...MU is 8-3 in the conference, ONE GAME out of first place.  Does the team have weaknesses?  Of course.  Is the blogger correct that MU will typically lose when the three starting guards have poor showings?  Absolutely...but I don't see that happening again this season. 

And the Dominic James bashing...don't even get me started.  We have one of the top point guards in the country, but he happened to have a bad game.  Good players have bad games...it happens.  But I'm pretty confident that we'll see a completely different result tonight at DePaul.  For all of you guys that spend time on other teams' boards, I have a legitimate question for you.  Do other teams obsess over their players' inability to make the NBA the way we do about James?  I don't know if the post-Wade season has us paranoid, but I've never seen anything like it.  We have a kid who is putting it all on the line to try to get a win.  In some cases, that leads to bad decisions (the Georgetown game).  Yet certain fans do nothing but rip him.  Why is that?

[NYWarrior]

But I'm pretty confident that we'll see a completely different result tonight at DePaul.

nice post, I'm in violent agreement with you.......esp on the snippet above!

[spiral97]

I'm sorry, but quite frankly, I could not stop rolling my eyes when I read this one.

A.) I don't care what anyone says, we were NOT dominated in the game against GT.  We were down by 1 with 8 minutes left for heck's sake.  IMHO we collapsed in those final 8 minutes because of the exhaustion many of our key players were feeling as a result of combination of the flu and heavy playing, the play of DJ (one area the article even comes close to being right), over-reliance on the three, and to a very very small portion the home court advantage during GT's 100 year celebration.  Take away the 100 year celebration and either of the first three and we would have kept it close for anybodies game.
B.) Yes, DJ is in a shooting slump.  No, Marquette is NOT doomed for the whole season without him shooting well.  In order to doom Marquette for a game, it tends to require around a minimum of 3 of the starters AND several bench players to not be shooting well.  Further, if I had to pick the most crucial person on the team to be playing well I'd honestly go with McNeal.  The mantra is growing old and tired I am sure but it remains the case: this team's offense starts and ends with defense.  McNeal is, quite frankly, the defensive spirit of the team.  Ironically, during the GT game before the last 8 minute meltdown, we were absolutely fine with McNeal on the bench for long stretches (due to his foul trouble).  Further irony that discounts this article is that I believe if Crean HAD made DJ "ride the pine" for much of the last 8 minutes so that the team could play, we also would have seen a much closer game result.
C.) Barro is fine inside and Kinsella did decent to help him out on post defense.  This is not going to doom Marquette either.  Sure, we had trouble stopping Hibbert when he was playing.  The gameplan wasn't to stop him (any gameplan that asks a player to stop someone like Hibbert is going to fail) but rather to limit him.  That we did - Hibbert, like the much feared Gray, ended up riding the pine for rather long periods which in turn, yep, limited his effectiveness.  By the way, how about stopping Barro?  He thrived for much of the game and nobody is going to convince me that letting Barro have a double double is anywhere near stopping him.
D.) No, Fitz is not Novak.  However, this year's team does not rely on a Novak like performance from Fitz.  The team does not live and die by the three.  It can, if it becomes over-reliant on the three as it did in those final fatal 8 minutes at GT.  That, quite simply, is something the team can and must learn from.  It's not like Marquette NEEDED to rely on the three - it has put up a minimum of 26 points from the paint in every big east game so far (and highs of 40 against West Virginia and 56 against Seton Hall).  The three does need to remain an aspect of the game but I don't think the GT game can be fairly used as a benchmark of this and missing so many of the threes there did not cost the team the game but rather the fact that they took so many threes (particularly in the desperate final 8 minutes) - something that can be much much more easily fixed than any shooting issue.
E.)  GT is NO lightweight.  I posted before the game that I wasn't sure how good of a team they were because I hadn't really seen any evidence of it.  They certainly proved it to me that they can be very very good.  I have NO embarrassment about Marquette losing to that team - they are, as a warrior would say, a worthy opponent.  Losing on the road at a good team's house is not a big deal.  I took a lot of solace in the fact that we kept pace with them through 80% of the game.  The remaining 20% happened for reasons inside and outside our control.  The portion outside our control was temporary and the players will recover their health.  The portions inside our control are fairly easy to fix and we've demonstrated the ability to play those parts differently in the past.

To say Marquette is doomed because of what happened during an 8 minute stretch in a single game... I'm still rolling my eyes...

[MUFanInGreenBay]

I suppose teams like Pitt are doomed now too after they lost. I mean they just got completely dominated on their HOME court by an unranked Louisville team. They were at times down as much as 20 points in the first half and second half. Pitt was never even within striking distance of UL the entire gane. Yet, look who is still in first place in the BE conference right now. It's Pitt. One game doesn't tell it all. It's the whole body of work.

[BuzzSucksSucks]

Poor writing too.

[NavinRJohnson]

Frankly, the Jim Rome reference/quote was my signal to stop reading. Told me all I needed to know about the writer right there.

[ecompt]

yeah, anyone who quotes Jim Rome loses me immediately. Sounds like this guy wrote this in the five minutes after the buzzer sounded Saturday. WOW, we squeaked out a win at Pittsburgh? Does this clown realize how hard that is to do? We won AT Louisville and Connecticut and blew out West Virginia. Things cannot be that bad.
P.S.  We will win the rest of our home games because I am making the trips from Erie to be there for all three.

[NYWarrior]

P.S.  We will win the rest of our home games because I am making the trips from Erie to be there for all three.

this is fantastic! 

[spiral97]

P.S.  We will win the rest of our home games because I am making the trips from Erie to be there for all three.

this is fantastic! 

As am I from Dallas.

As is rocky from Colorado.

We're all season ticketholders now!

Hrm.. I should add the caveat that the DePaul game isn't really a home game although we all know it will be.

[ski44]

MU overview?

how about 'overreaction'


enjoy the ride

Looks like the article was close to right on after the DPU game...

http://www.sportsandpopculturebank.com/muringoutahoya.html