Some thoughts on yesterday's game

[CTWarrior]

A dozen thoughts on yesterday's game

1.  You can say a lot about Crean good or bad, but the team plays HARD.
2.  Our 1,000 play playbook all seems to be variations of the three guards run a weave at the top and look for a chance to slash and create.  This offense is doomed to failure when there is no big man and no three point shooter to deliver the ball to.  UW just challenged the penetrator with 2/3 players and weren't the least bit concerned about them kicking the ball to someone.  Ooze got a couple hoops off penetration, but no other interior threat.
3.  Murf complains about the switching defenses and I never thought he was right, but yesterday our zone defense was atrocious.  Fitz cannot/does not provide weak side help from the 4, though he was surprisingly strong guarding the low post in the man-to-man.
4.  Wes Matthews, IMO, does not have a particularly good handle, and shoot not be a primary ball handler.  Too many times he lost control of the ball yesterday.
5.  McNeal has a tremendous basketball IQ on the defensive end (he anticipates, he moves his feet, he cuts off dribbling/passing lanes, he disrupts, he's tremendous) but a miniscule basketball IQ on the offensive end (His attempted alley-oop to our 5-10 PG on a 4 on 1 fast break was the height of stupidity at a crucial point in the game, but I doubt it surprised any MU regular fan when he threw that ball away.  He rushes bad shots, goes 1 on 3, etc.)
6.  Tucker is a tremendous college basketball player.  Taylor, too.
7.  Butch and Steinsma do not impress at all,, but UW's big guys as a group clog the middle, get the boards, do what needs to be done.
8.  We have tremendous athletes, but not necessarily tremendous basketball players.
9.  If you have guards that can handle and adequately skilled big people, you will give us lots of trouble.
10.  We are a team with one player over 6-5 that can play (and he's no star) and we can't shoot.  That is not a recipe for big time success.  The max upside for this team is an NCAA bid and maybe one win if the matchup is right.  I know Fitz is taller than 6-5, but he doesn't play like it.
11.  Dominic James should be the point guard.  All you people jumping off the DJ bandwagon need to step back and think a minute.  He's not a great shooter, but he's got everything else you could want from a point.  But his one deficiency (shooting) is the one attirbute the team needs from him most, because it isn't found somewhere else.  The other teams know it too.  He, like all PGs, needs other threats on the floor to be successful, particularly if his shot isn't falling.  To me he is a 5-10 Jason Kidd, which adds up to a solid NBA player.
12.  I know, I know.  College basketball is a guard dominated game.  But you can't win at the level we want to win with no interior threat.  Hopefully, this is a truth Coach Crean will learn this season as clearly as he learned the lesson that you can never have enough guards after Diener's last two seasons.

[mviale]

I hear you, but in my mind we didnt play a good game and we had a chance with 5 min to go to steal it.  We lost by only 4 pts.  If we make that alyoop and a few more FTs, we are in OT.

I thought the big 3 played like sophs during the first 15 min of each half and then settled down,

[williewampum]

I hear you, but in my mind we didnt play a good game and we had a chance with 5 min to go to steal it.  We lost by only 4 pts.  If we make that alyoop and a few more FTs, we are in OT.

I thought the big 3 played like sophs during the first 15 min of each half and then settled down,

You're trying to make yourself feel good.  MU was never really in the game where they had a legit shot to win; that's why the loss was so discouraging.  When fans have to resort to "well, we only lost by 4," referring to the biggest rivalry game of the year that is at home and MU is favored to win, you know the team is in trouble.  And it might be time to stop calling James, McNeal and Matthews the BIG 3.  They really don't earn the title.

[mviale]

Your badgers couldnt put us away.  We had a horrible game, but we were in it till the end.

[Mayor McCheese]

I love it..... Marquette played terrible, Tucker just went off for 28, and the Badgers only won by 4.... but to them they are the FAR superior team, I will stick by I think a 10 game series Marquette wins 7 of the 10, just not their night

[williewampum]

I love it..... Marquette played terrible, Tucker just went off for 28, and the Badgers only won by 4.... but to them they are the FAR superior team, I will stick by I think a 10 game series Marquette wins 7 of the 10, just not their night

You do know that MU was playing at home and was favored to win the game?  When fans of a team start looking for moral victories in games they were supposed to win, then something is wrong.

And, btw, I thought both teams played pretty poorly.

[CWSKeith]

And, btw, I thought both teams played pretty poorly.

Wisconsin played poorly?  Did you watch that team 'get after it' defensively?  They played extremely well on the defensive side of the ball.  They contained MUs guards all game and forced them into turnovers.

And their star player played like, well, a star, going 13-for-22 from the field.  Sure, they weren't perfect -- their three pointer and free throw percentages weren't a whole lot better than ours'.  But to say they played "poorly" is off, IMO.

[mu_hilltopper]

I will stick by I think a 10 game series Marquette wins 7 of the 10, just not their night

I'm the exact opposite.  Before the game (which I predicted a 70-65 loss, one point off) I thought if this game was played 10 times (at the BC) UW would win 6 of them.  After the game, I'd bump that to 7 of 10.

If you didn't/don't think that, I'm guessing you might not have seen the team play besides the 3 games on TV.  We've struggled against teams with half our (perceived) talent .. (although I've seen that many OOC years, a frustrating truism.)

Over the past 23 years, UW owns us, winning all but 6 games.  And they owned us from about 5 minutes into the game, all the way to the buzzer.  Had a couple of our missed 15 bombs behind the arc fell, I have no doubt UW would have answered in kind.

UW was the better team, and had the best player on the floor.  The game was played, and we lost.  It wasn't 4 points close, even though that's the final score.  They beat us by a lot more, (especially since it was at the BC.)

[MU gimp ONE]

Now is the time that everyone gets over critical of the team and starts the crazy threads about the NCAA tourney...  Truth is that the effort we gave the other day was about as good as we gave against duke.  The difference was that Tucker went off and McRoberts didn't, that is why one is a W and the other an L.

I am not saying this is a great team because we all know about their flaws, but it is early and we still have a whole conference to go through.  I thought that UW played well and hit the shots they needed to hit.  However, we did have a chance late in the game, which was encouraging based on how awful we shot the ball.  Even if one of Lazars 3's fell, or we didn't miss that many FT, we have a legit shot to win.  Once this team finds it's stroke all the negative talk will quiet and everyone will focus on positivies again.

Unfortunately, we have a full week before the next game.  This means that there will be a lot of over analyzing of this game for 5 more days.  Eventually, we will get over it and move on.

By the way, the refs were horrible.  Both ways.  The one call that is still bothering me was when Flowers went down crying from a shot to the face and the refs stopped Marquette's fast break.  They are not allowed to stop play like that if UW is not in possesion.  considering it wasn't a serious injury and he was already off the court.  What was up with that?

[Djgoldnboy]

My thoughts exactly...that call to stop a fast break, I think it was 3 on 2 was absolutely horrible, I've NEVER seen anything like that in a college game before.  Hell I've seen the exact opposite most times...the kid will be laying on the court a few minutes until his team gets the ball back and they can call timeout.  Absolute garbage officiating.

[mu_hilltopper]

Indeed, that happened a couple games ago at the BC.  I want to say either Wes or Lazar was down under the our basket, writhing around in pain.   The opposing team went on offense, down to their side of the court 5 on 4.  They missed, MU got the ball and brought it back to the other end, crossed the time line, and an injury timeout was called.

I thought it was odd, since he was really hurting, completely prone, for like 20 seconds with no game stoppage.