Pirate thoughts

[tower912]

1.  Lots of bias affirmation today.   
2.  JJJ got lots of minutes, played well.   Still too many out of control turnovers.
3.  Derrick played elite defense on Gibbs.
4.  Steve with a stellar game
5.  Derrick with more turnovers than usual, including a near unforgivable one.
6.  Wojo took the air out of the ball too soon again. 
7.  Can't blame Carlino for dribbling around and chucking today.   
8.  Defensive effort was superb all day.
9.  Bad free throw shooting is contagious.
10.  Seton Hall played worse than MU did.   Grab it, embace it, run home. 

[GoldenZebra]

Still cant decide if the team plays better with or without carlino. I wanna say they dont..?

[Wojo'sMojo]

1.  Lots of bias affirmation today.   
2.  JJJ got lots of minutes, played well.   Still too many out of control turnovers.
3.  Derrick played elite defense on Gibbs.
4.  Steve with a stellar game
5.  Derrick with more turnovers than usual, including a near unforgivable one.
6.  Wojo took the air out of the ball too soon again. 
7.  Can't blame Carlino for dribbling around and chucking today.   
8.  Defensive effort was superb all day.
9.  Bad free throw shooting is contagious.
10.  Seton Hall played worse than MU did.   Grab it, embace it, run home. 

In all seriousness Tower, what is your definition of elite defense?

[ChicosBailBonds]

Still cant decide if the team plays better with or without carlino. I wanna say they dont..?

Do the Lakers play better without Kobe?  Is Kobe a great player?   Interesting questions.

[tower912]

In all seriousness, blocking a jump shot at 6'1, stopping a breakaway lay up, holding Gibbs down for the first 37 minutes equals elite defense on Gibbs.  

[willie warrior]

In all seriousness Tower, what is your definition of elite defense?

That is called...the big slurp.

[WarriorFan]

6.  yep - and nearly lost it again.

One of the easiest ways to win is to score more points, and you don't do that when you stop at the free throw line instead of taking an open layup, or throw the ball to the top of the key instead of a point blank putback.

[Texas Western]

Still cant decide if the team plays better with or without carlino. I wanna say they dont..?

We just won on the road without Carlino against a team that decisively beat us with Carlino. So I would respectfully disagree.

[Wojo'sMojo]

In all seriousness, blocking a jump shot at 6'1, stopping a breakaway lay up, holding Gibbs down for the first 37 minutes equals elite defense on Gibbs.  

I disagree that he played elite defense today, but thanks for telling me your reasoning for thinking he did.

[willie warrior]

Wojo sure as hell is a great bench coach down the stretch, ain'a?

[willie warrior]

I disagree that he played elite defense today, but thanks for telling me your reasoning for thinking he did.

Yep. He had a dunk this year also, which makes him man of the year.

[g0lden3agle]

We just won on the road without Carlino against a team that decisively beat us with Carlino. So I would respectfully disagree.

This team played totally different without Carlino. They are capable of playing this way with Carlino on the court as well. If they can play with this sort of fire with Carlino hot from 3 we can steal a few more this season.

[Vander Blue Man Group]

We just won on the road without Carlino against a team that decisively beat us with Carlino. So I would respectfully disagree.

Making that determination out of a two game sample makes a ton of sense.  

[tower912]

http://scores.espn.go.com/ncb/boxscore?gameId=400588447

Wojosmojo, the play late in the first half when he stuck with Gibbs all of the way to the rack, contested the driving lay up and then got the defensive rebound, forcing Gibbs to foul....
That was elite defense.   Gibbs shot 4-12 for the game from the floor.    Elite defense. 

[CTWarrior]

We just won on the road without Carlino against a team that decisively beat us with Carlino. So I would respectfully disagree.

I think Seton Hall should be looking at this the same way.  That Whitehead kid absolutely killed them with stupid play after stupid play.  They made their comeback after sitting him down and he didn't play when they killed us. 

Our offense wasn't tremendous after the first 8 minutes or so, but defense was solid and finally for once the other team missed many open 3s and FTs.

[BM1090]

This is the first game that Wojo looked upset we were taking the air out of the ball. With about 3 mins left, we had two poor possessions in a row after wasting clock. Wojo called timeout, ran a quick play to get Taylor a shot. Next possession we got a steal, had a 3 on 2 and pushed the ball for a Taylor dunk. Don't think the stalling today was on Wojo, just an inexperienced team not sure how to close games.

[Big Papi]

UGLY last 5 minutes of the game.

I am starting to worry that Wojo is not a good coach.  A team that struggles to score in general and doesn't have their best offensive player, can't afford to pull the ball when they have 3v1 and 4v2 opportunities with a lot of time left in the game.  I understand this team lacks skilled players but the collapse the last 5 minutes of the game when Seton Hall made their run, can only be blamed on coaching.  (This is a trend not an exception). 

Thank goodness we pulled out the win, the team needed it but the win was a more of a gift from Whitehead playing awful and some of the worst shots taken at the end of a 1 point game with 20 some seconds left. 

[Texas Western]

This team played totally different without Carlino. They are capable of playing this way with Carlino on the court as well. If they can play with this sort of fire with Carlino hot from 3 we can steal a few more this season.

They can't play in real life this way with Carlino , he upsets the team chemistry . We are better off without him. We just won on the road against a quality team because we had multiple contributors .

[willie warrior]

This is the first game that Wojo looked upset we were taking the air out of the ball. With about 3 mins left, we had two poor possessions in a row after wasting clock. Wojo called timeout, ran a quick play to get Taylor a shot. Next possession we got a steal, had a 3 on 2 and pushed the ball for a Taylor dunk. Don't think the stalling today was on Wojo, just an inexperienced team not sure how to close games.

If it ain't Wojo, then it sure as hell must be his extension on the court--the elite one.

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

In all seriousness Tower, what is your definition of elite defense?

Holding the opposing team's best player to 33% shooting

[NersEllenson]

http://scores.espn.go.com/ncb/boxscore?gameId=400588447

Wojosmojo, the play late in the first half when he stuck with Gibbs all of the way to the rack, contested the driving lay up and then got the defensive rebound, forcing Gibbs to foul....
That was elite defense.  

Just like the one at the 1:54 mark where he fouled Gibbs and gave him an And 1 opportunity that brought them to 55-54?

This is where you lose me - stop trying to polish the turd.  Derrick was very shaky today.  His defense was solid today, but stop trying to make it as though we just witnessed Jimmy Butler on Tu Holloway.

[D'Lo Brown]

We just won on the road without Carlino against a team that decisively beat us with Carlino. So I would respectfully disagree.

If you watched the game, you would have seen that Seton Hall lost the game more than Marquette won it. They were completely out of control and immature on the offensive end and played terrible post defense against a team that could literally only score from the underneath the basket. We were 1-10 from 3 and I don't know how many jump shots we even made beyond that.

It's easy to make sweeping judgments if you look at the result of the game from a great distance but that isn't at all what happened. We clearly needed Matt's leadership at the end of the game.

[tower912]

That is called...the big slurp.

Nah, I thought he played his worst offensive game in some time.   Dreadful.  I missed Carlino today because he couldn't sit Derrick down on offense.  But I thought his defensive work on Gibbs was very good.  

[BM1090]

If it ain't Wojo, then it sure as hell must be his extension on the court--the elite one.

I think it had been wojo up until today. Today, he was visibly frustrated when we pulled the ball out on potential fast breaks and he called a timeout and we immediately pushed the ball. Re watch the last 4 mins. After wojos timeout we didn't really stall at all. In fact,  Jajuan went to the hoop early in the clock and missed. We had a few bad turnovers. But we didn't really stall after the TO.

[forgetful]

This is the first game that Wojo looked upset we were taking the air out of the ball. With about 3 mins left, we had two poor possessions in a row after wasting clock. Wojo called timeout, ran a quick play to get Taylor a shot. Next possession we got a steal, had a 3 on 2 and pushed the ball for a Taylor dunk. Don't think the stalling today was on Wojo, just an inexperienced team not sure how to close games.

I saw the same thing.