[Paint Touches] Is MU's Defense an NCAA Tournament Liability?

[Jockey]

OMax and Stevie spearhead the defense, but the great news is that everyone has bought in.

[Daniel]

The defense in the BE tourney was ratcheted up a notch and was pretty much continuous both halves.  Unreal and better.  Goo Marquette!  So fun to watch this team succeed!

[bilsu]

The key to this MU team is to keep Oso and Kolek out of foul trouble. We need to avoid teams like Duke that have multiple mobile bigmen.

[The Thing]

It was fun to see us hit a shot clock beating deep 3 pointer rather than have it done to us!😁

Just awesome defense last night.

[StillAWarrior]

Snoop

I hope you, your wife and all of the faithful fans had a weekend of a lifetime. It was unreal watching in my living room and can only imagine the excitement. Thanks for cheering on the boys!!!

Speaking for myself and my son, it really was an almost surreal experience. I am so glad we came. We don’t get to spend nearly as much time together as we’d like, and this was a very special weekend for us.

[Goose]

StillaWarrior

That is awesome. Very cool you could experience that with your son.

[wadesworld]

Miller and the Xavier players probably had nightmares of Marquette's defense after hitting the sack at their hotel. I doubt they got much sleep.

I’m guessing they slept in their own apartments last night.

[MU82]

Miller said it felt like we had six guys on the floor last night and I agree with him.

That was elite, elite, elite defense. Ran them off the line, communicated, recovered. Made them uncomfortable at every turn.

Not bad for being unsustainable.

Our guys did an awesome job running X off the 3-point line. They had a few open 3s, but just a few. Most of 'em were contested. Same with UConn, especially at the key junctures of the game.

Hilarious that Hurley came out looking like a dope for that "unsustainable" comment. Maybe if he had coached his players to get the ball inside during the last 2 1/2 minutes, he even would have been right!

I do think there was something to Xavier being tired since their bench is much shorter than Marquette's, but I am sure Shaka preached getting on them early for that very reason.

I love the way we attacked them the first 15 minutes of the game -- if X wasn't tired going in, they sure as hell were by 7:15 ET! I think both teams were pretty tired the last 6-7 minutes, which contributed to both offenses having a rough time down the stretch.

The key to this MU team is to keep Oso and Kolek out of foul trouble. We need to avoid teams like Duke that have multiple mobile bigmen.

Hey Sunshine ... I'm just happy that maybe, just maybe, you've done the math and now think we'll win more than 3 times starting with the March 4 game vs. St. John's.

3
St. John's
St John's
NCAA

But sure, Moser would have won those 3 games at MSG more betterer.

[NickelDimer]

When it looks like you’re defending with 6 instead of 5, which it did almost the entire game last night, you’re doing something very right. That’s the best our rotations have looked this season.

[tower912]

Pudner has a story on the Dodd's site about MU's defense during the last 42 minutes of game play.