Thoughts coming out of a terrific win over Notre Dame:

[MU Avenue]

(1) Does anyone else think we commit -- or are called for -- an outrageously large number of fouls? Seems to be true in every game.

(2) What is with Dwight Burke taking three-point shots, even if we are ahead by 26 points or more? Is he an especially strong outside shooter?

(3) I have already expressed concern about the inadequacies and unreliability of Burke and especially Ousmane Barro. It seems Barro has not only stalled in his improvement but is becoming less and less of a factor as he moves through his senior season.

(4) I read several stories in recent days and this morning about how Notre Dame -- especially its big men -- would be a true test for Marquette. Perhaps Marquette's toughest test so far this season. Great to see MU not only win but win huge. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

[ecompt]

Luke Harangody is what happens when a farmer gets drunk one night and makes love to a large barnyard animal.
The referees love him, though.

[Henry Sugar]

This game just made me dislike Shrek more.  As big and as strong as he is, there's no way he should get those calls for flopping.

Nice to see Mike Kelley call him out on it.

[MU Avenue]

... you will see that Dwight Burke was 0 for 3 from beyond the three-point line.

[Brew City]

For being the biggest, strongest guy on the floor, Harangody sure got pushed onto the floor quite a bit.     I do think that he was getting tired towards the end of the first half, and a lot of the second half, so maybe thats why he kept going down .  Seriously though, MU's best defense against him is to run him.  He'll get tired very quickly, and I thought it started to show.

Blackledge performed pretty well in my opinion.

[ecompt]

The boxscore I have shows him with only two shots from the field. Acker was 0-for-3 from outside the arc. I don't believe Burke handled the ball more than twice the entire game.

[ecompt]

Blackledge was huge, especially defensively, and the strategy to push the ball was perfect. Couldn't believe Brey was trying to keep up with us. 

[Pakuni]

This game just made me dislike Shrek more.  As big and as strong as he is, there's no way he should get those calls for flopping.

Nice to see Mike Kelley call him out on it.

No kidding.
A couple of those flops would have made Vlade Divac blush.

[CWSKeith]

Harangody is a whiner and his antics on the court are annoying, but damn is he a player.  He's a lot slimmer this season and, as a result, his footwork down in the post is a lot better (and quicker) on both ends.  I told my dad before the game that Harangody was going to get his regardless, and that the game would come down to how well we defended everyone else -- Marquette did a fantastic job on everyone else and deserve a lot of praise for the effort today.

[spiral97]

Love the win.. glad to see us bounce back in tenacity and overall shooting and defense..
things that jumped out at me as needing to improve on going forward:
1.) points in the paint.. I can't tell you how many shots we took within fingers reach of the basket that we missed.. points in paint was a HUGE stat for us in the first half of this season.. couldn't have been much today.
2.) ball scrambling - much better in the second half than the first; in the first we missed out on a number of loose ball opportunities
3.) rebounding - we lost the rebounding edge by 10 (46-36)... hayward had 9 rebs going into the half and only 2 more the rest of the game. We didn't even win on our own hoop.

loved that we had foul trouble on burke and barro and still got it done.  Blackledge was a gap filler and let us continue with those guys off the floor.  Glad to see DJ showed no obvious signs of the wrist sprain and was able to play.  Only 13 TOs for us vs 24 for ND - wow considering ND historically has not turned it over much this season.

[chefrad]

Harangody has been taking lessons from Sean Battier, the reigning king of flopping. It's not the first similarity between Dukies and ND prima donas.

But let's not pretend Hanangody isn't a good player. He is.

[jaygall31]

Let's get over barro's and burke's back. They'll be fine..we can't expect a lot EVERY GAME. There will be games we win because of one or both of them. I wonder if Barro even knows how big of a piece of THIS puzzle he is...

he's so imporant.

[bilsu]

We were quick in this game like we were against Wisconsin. My question is where were we against West Virginia. West Virginia was the quicker team that day. Does travel make that much difference?

[CTWarrior]

We foul like crazy, especially our guards.  We get away with a lot, as we did today.  We grab and clutch and reach endlessly.  By the same token, I think Harangody's primary offensive move is a blatant offensive foul, where he just bullies into the defender one dribble at a time, backing him down and pushing him.  I used to referee (not to the college level, of course), but I don't know how the current guys figure out what to call and what not to call.  There is just constant contact and fouling in today's game.

[Big Papi]

A couple of comments:

1. Chances are we are going to get called for a lot of fouls because we play an attacking, aggressive defense with lots of reaching and poking.  It leads to lots of steals and lots of fouls.  Although it was our bigs we picked up the majority of fouls yesterday.

2. Loved that we were able to score off of the opening tip with an easy lay-up.

3.  Harangody is a beast but the last two games showed that he can struggle against taller athletic 5s guarding him.  We caused him some problems with the double team as it lead to a few turnovers.  Mbakwe will match up well against him next year as I think he is strong enough to push him away from the basket and will definitely swat some of those balls away.

4.  I have not been a Trend believer but he deserves more minutes.

5.  During the first half foul display of our bigs, I was hoping to see Hazel get some meaningful minutes and see what he could do.  Oh well, I guess it is not his time yet.

6.  Hayward is awesome.  Slowed down in the second half but now that he has his 3 stroke, he is at another level.  And he is only a soph.  Wow.

7.  Great 3 point shooting.  If we start off 1-9 like we did against Seton Hall, we would have been toast.

8.  Looked like a great crowd.

9.  ND heading into this game trailed for only a little over 10 minutes for the entire season.  After yesterday's game you can add 40 to that.  We spanked a good NCAA tourny team.

10.  Good to see Cube hit some.