No jinx, no jinx!

Last year I put out a post before the annual Marquette-Wisconsin men's basketball game making fun of MU. And then UW committed 18 turnovers and blew their exceedingly long home winning streak (although the moronic changes to student seat allocation probably had something to do with the two home losses last season), despite last season generally being excellent. This year, I'm trying not to build up any bad karma. This game will be tough stuff, a grudge match against a very talented team in perhaps the loudest, most raucous atmosphere the Badgers will face all season.

Marquette has some great upperclassmen talent in senior guards Dominic James, Jerel McNeal, and native Madisonian Wes Matthews, and junior forward Lazar Hayward. These guys are all strong, fast, and athletic, with multifaceted games. Moreoever, they're all heavily experienced--even Krabbenhoft and Landry haven't played as many minutes as any one of Marquette's "Big Three" seniors. Plus, with these guys on the floor, Marquette's been known for its suffocating, turnover-creating perimeter defense, the same thing that undid the Badgers against UConn, turning a competitive contest into a blowout in the last ten minutes. Actually, Marquette looks a lot like UConn, if you just take away the 7 foot 3 guy, and subtract a couple of inches from their power forward Jeff Adrien (to turn him into Hayward).

Unfortunately for Marquette, those are some pretty significant differences. MU's weakness right now--due to injuries, sudden departues and recruiting turnoever due to Tom Crean leaving-- is their lack of depth in the paint. One of the two big questions in this game, for me, is whether UW is going to be able to exploit that weakness, particularly with Landry and Leuer (and maybe Nankivil, if he opts to become a bit more aggressive offensively). Can UW handle the pressure on the perimeter, avoid turning the ball over on the outside (which would undoubtedly lead to fast break points for MU), and get the ball into the post? If they can, this would likely exploit MU's issues in the interior and their occasional problems with fouling. If not, I expect a bit of a beatdown by the Golden Eagles, unless UW can nail 60% of their threes again, like they did at Virginia Tech.

The other question is whether UW can play good enough team defense to handle MU's quickness. Despite being guard heavy, they haven't been a great three-point shooting team this year. Instead, look for them to penetrate, run pick and rolls, anything to get the ball into the paint, but not in a traditional post-up situation. I don't think UW's main guys, except for Hughes perhaps, can individually keep Marquette's guards out of the paint. So they question is whether the Badgers can give quality help defense on penetration without getting burned elsewhere on the court. They need to force jumpers. If MU's taking a lot of contested jump-shots, and not driving to the rack and getting scores and fouls on most possessions, UW will have a good shot at winning.

So in sum, I guess this game will be a good measuring stick for UW's progress this season-- have they learned to take better care of the ball? Has their help defense improved? Like all the Badger fans out there, I sure hope they don't wind up on the short end tonight.

Puzzling Occurrences

First off, the Wisconsin men's basketball team appears to be signing the guy in the picture, Ryan Evans, a 6'6" wing from Arizona. And this isn't for a year and a half from now. No, this is for next season. What's a little weird is that reportedly Evans does not have any other scholarship offers from any other D-I programs. That's worrying, but okay, let's just hope that Bo and his staff found an uber-sleeper. Apparently Evans has grown a bunch in high school, meaning he was probably overlooked early on. And he is allegedly "super athletic" and pretty big, and everyone's been crying for an athletic wing for some time now. Plus, he seems to have had a very solid senior year, leading his team to the semifinals of the Arizona state playoffs. So there should be some optimism, I guess. I mean, look at Stephen Curry. He was undersized, so no one gave him the time of day. Now he's one of the best players in the country.

But still, this development has some iffy reverberations. It seems to mean that Gullickson's scholarship is getting pulled, which is a bummer for Kevin. He's a neat guy and a good student. It also means that Wisconsin appears to not be in a position to add another 2009 scholarship player beyond the two that have already committed-- Diamond Taylor, a guard from suburban Chicago, and Mike Bruesewitz, a ginger forward from Minnesota. This means that a bevy of other talented prospects, several of whom are from the upper-Midwest, and thus might be reasonable targets for Wisconsin, do not appear to be options. This includes three very athletic wings, including Royce White and Rodney Williams of Minnesota, and Racine's Jamil Wilson, who by all accounts appears to be the most talented Wisconsin state prospect in quite some time. Foreclosing these possibilities for a late-bloomer from Arizona seems a bit odd. Again, I guess we should trust Bo. He and his staff should have earned our confidence by now.

The other weird happening is Marquette filled their open coaching job with a guy named Buzz Williams, a career assistant who's only been with the program for one season. He spent two years at Texas A&M, and otherwise has bounced around. He's only in his mid-30s, and seemed to be hired in effort to keep the current team and the current recruiting class intact. Williams is mainly known for being a solid recruiter, especially in Texas, but not for much else. A very strange hire from my perspective. If you want a quality big league coach, I think you either pull a successful coach from a smaller D-I school, or a really successful coach from a lower division school, or you pull a talented long-time assistant from a very successful program. Personally, I prefer the first option (guys like Bo, Bruce Pearl, Ben Howland), but the second option has worked well too (Roy Williams, Bruce Weber, Matt Painter, Tom Izzo).

Marquette seemed to go with some weird bastardized take on the career assistant option. And hey, maybe it will work out in the long run and this Buzz Williams fellow will be a great coach. But the odds of that happening don't look that good. Williams's only other head coaching experience was one year at the University of New Orleans two seasons ago. His team finished the season with a 14-17 record (they were 10-19 the previous year), and has actually improved since he left (the "Privateers" were 19-13 this season). Maybe the MU athletic department thinks they can make a legit run in the Big East and the tourney next year if McNeal and James don't leave early and their recruiting class stays intact. I guess that's some justification. But for sure, no other BCS conference school would have hired Williams to fill their head coaching vacancy. Frankly, this hire reeks of desperation and short-term thinking. I guess that's good if you're a Badger fan and you dislike Marquette. Not so much if you root for the state's schools generally.

The Gold Is Blinded By The Shine

According to the Journal-Sentinel, possible Crean replacements at Marquette include--
Tony Bennett (Wash. State head coach), Sean Miller (Xavier HC), the Davidson head coach, and Chris Lowery (So. Illinois HC). They must be kidding. Bennett and Miller turned down the Indiana job, or at least excluded themselves from consideration. That's the job Crean left for, dunderheads. No way Miller or Bennett are interested in the MU job. Plus, Bennett's style of play would be anathema to MU's current, run and gun, foul and turn-the-ball-over players. And the Davidson coach is far too old, far too East Coast, and far too entrenched with his sweet deal at Davidson to leave. Plus, Lowery turned down several high profile jobs after SIU's excellent season a year ago, and he's an SIU grad. Again, it seems very unlikely that he'd leave for the Marquette job. Did Marquette beat writer Todd Rosiak just pull those names out of a hat? Ridiculous.

The other two names he suggests are somewhat legit, in my estimation-- the coach at Virginia Commonwealth, who's racked up a good Colonial League record and who managed to beat Duke in the first round last year; and the coach at Wright State, who's had similar success in the Horizon League, though his team was better last season. Really, I don't think MU is going to be able to snag a successful head coach from another large conference. They have nice practice facilities, yes, and they play in a relatively high profile league, but that's pretty much all they have going for them. The school is just ok, the Marquette interchange is not that pleasant of an area, Milwaukee doesn't produce that much talent, the Bradley Center stinks, the "tradition" of Al McGuire is sort of a millstone since it creates unreasonable expectations, being in the Big East means tons of lengthy travel (road trip to Tampa, New Jersey or Morgantown anyone?), and the league will likely be dominated by G'Town, Louisville, UConn, Pitt, West Virginia and the 'Cuse for the foreseeable future. Looking for a successful coach from a smaller league, or for a talented assistant from a successful program (Crean came directly from Izzo's staff at Sparty) is probably their likeliest bet.

Ha Hanh!

Thank you Indiana and Marquette for brightening my day. Indiana is about to announce the hiring of current Marquette men's basketball coach Tom Crean for their opening. Yes, he of the spray tans, ugly glasses, ridiculous sideline pacing, pro-style (one-on-one) offense and foul-happy defense. My initial reaction was-- "wow, you'd think Indiana could have done better" and I'm sticking to it.

If I recall the cover of this morning's Trib correctly, Crean has amassed a .660 winning percentage at Marquette, won only one conference title (Wade's last season), won no conference tournament titles in either the Big East or Conference USA, and taken the team to one Final Four (again, in Wade's last season). Until this past March, Crean had yet to ever win an NCAA tournament game without Dwyane Wade on his team. This year, with a team led by three highly reputed three-year starters, the team won one game, squeaking by an injury-riddled Kentucky before losing to Stanford in the second round. (Stanford went on to get pounded by Texas, who was in turn pounded by Memphis.) Sweet redemption!

And it's not like Crean's record is built on playing cupcakes at home or anything. Far from it! This season the Gold beat Sacramento State, Florida Gulf Coast, Coppin State, Chaminade, Savannah State, IUPU-Fort Wayne, and, wait for it, Utah Valley State (that's a different school than basketball powerhouse Utah State). The Gold went on to lose this season to Syracuse by 15, Louisville twice by a combined 34 points, West Virginia by 15, and UConn by 16. And this is a team with four players who are all-conference caliber in McNeal, James, Mathews, and Hayward. Yep, Crean is an excellent coach. It's not like he's made a living off his one star-driven Final Four run or anything. No, not at all. Bwah-ha ha ha!

Sure, opposing Big Ten fans can expect him to do a better job at Indiana. Though IU isn't the national basketball powerhouse it likes to think it is, it is the nicest state school in a state that produces a fair amount of basketball talent (though again, not as much as IU fans would like to think that it does). And his handsy, pressing defense should speed the pace of the league up a bit, which is what I was hoping for with the Indiana hire. (I was actively against Tony Bennett at IU for the same reason.) Alas, Crean is going to have a tough row to hoe his first couple years at IU, with what looks like every returning starter leaving or getting kicked off the team (though I bet he'll invite Bassett and Ellis back), and several key recruits abandoning their commitments after Sampson left. I'm sure he'll get them back to decent after a year or two, and they should be regularly competitive at some point, but I'm not at all afraid of Crean at IU, and as a Badger fan, that's all you could ask for.

The question then becomes-- what happens to Marquette? Who will replace Crean? (No idea.) Will some of their recruits welsh? (Pretty likely, if the school releases them from their letters of intent.) Will they retreat back from relative success to general mediocrity? (Probably, at least in the short term.) Does this abdicate high profile Wisconsin state recruits to UW? (Jerry Smith and Reece Gaines going to Louisville and the Badgers' high academic standards and ego-less mentality indicate no.) Will UW even more firmly cement its status as the state's best basketball program? (It certainly looks that way.)

It's Papist Week!

Yes, the annual build up to the showdown between the forces of fun, frivolity, intellectual achievement, tolerance, and reasonably thrifty tuition (deep breath in) and the forces of overt seriousness, empty piety, inability to get over the 70s, freeway interchanges, and undeserved positive reputations.

(An aside-- Marquette and UW operate the only two law schools in Wisconsin. Based on how people talk about Marquette law, I always thought they were about even with UW quality-wise. However, recently I discovered that while UW law is tied for 31st in the prevalent national ratings system, Marquette is 97th! Way worse! That puts Moo behind such academic luminaries as SUNY-Buffalo, Georgia State, and the University of Toledo. Ouch. If you'd be taking an academic step-up by transferring to Georgia State, you know you're in trouble.)

On the basketball floor, however, Marquette appears to boast the stronger, or at least more defined, squad this year. After NBA teams discovered that MU point guard Dominic James was really quite wee and couldn't shoot consistently, the former Big East freshman of the year opted out of the draft and came back for his junior season. He, once again, is joined in the backcourt by dynamo Jerel McNeal and Madison Memorial product Wesley Matthews, each also juniors. This trio is joined by forward Lazar Hayward and guard David Cubillan, both sophomores, and both players who have shown dramatic improvement thus far this season. Some of the usual suspects return in forwards Ousmane Barro and Dan Fitzgerald, and someone I'm not familiar with, a heavyset 6'8" forward named Dwight Burke, is playing a fair amount.

Looking at the individual stats for these guys reveals some interesting tidbits. First, unfortunately for UW fans, Jerel McNeal has cut down on his main weaknesses-- turning the ball over and fouling. His improved turnover rate makes him a far more valuable player for the Gold, and has actually elevated his offensive efficiency above Matthews' and even James'. He also is more involved in the team's offense than any other player. McNeal is fouling less as well, averaging only 2.8 fouls a contest after racking up 3.5 last season. This may explain why, despite his great defensive skills, he's no longer corralling as many steals, having ceded the team's theft lead to James.

Second, despite McNeal's improvement, he's not that an efficient offensive player, and neither is James or Matthews. In fact, Wes appears to have been pretty poor on offense this season, posting an atrociously low offensive efficiency rating due to turning the ball over far too often. Appropriately, he has let the two improved sophomores, Cubillan and Hayward take more shots and get more involved in the offense. These two turks are actually MU's best offensive players so far. Cubillan's been shooting decently (almost always from outside) and hardly ever been turning the ball over, and Hayward's been making nearly 63% of his two point shots. And he's taken 43 two pointers, which is not a small number.

Third, while the team appears to ignore Barro on the offensive end, he is their most effective defensive player. He leads the team in defensive rebounding, and is easily the squad's best shot blocker. Oddly, he hasn't been playing all that much this season, as Marquette appears to be favoring an intensely diminutive line-up with five guys 6'6" or under (McNeal, James, Matthews, Cubillan and Hayward) leading them in minutes. That seems ripe to change against UW, unless Bo decides to match small ball with small ball.

To date, college basketball stat head Ken Pomeroy rates Marquette as a brutally efficient offensive team, with the third most efficient offense in his adjusted ratings. Marquette plays pretty solid defense as well, as Pomeroy's rating has them listed as the twenty-fifth. (These are all available via the Basketball Prospectus website, conveniently linked to your right.) And those filthy team numbers, again, unfortunately for UW fans, were not garnered against an all patty-cake schedule-- the Gold put up its best offensive numbers against Rob Jeter's UW-Milwaukee team, and Oklahoma State. Hmmm... trouble.

However, UW is actually slotted just ahead of Moo in Pomeroy's most recent overall ratings, and that's due to their defensive dominance. Even including the Cameron Indoor debacle, Wisconsin rates as the third most efficient defensive team in the nation. Offensively, as any UW fan would expect, they're fair to middlin', rating 48th nationally.

So this looks like a game where the irresistible force, Marquette's super efficient offense, led by Hayward's and McNeal's twos, James' steals, and Cubillan's steady hand and effective outside shooting, meet the immovable object of UW's defense. Then you throw in other factors, that MU's D has been better than UW's O, and that MU played Duke far tougher than UW, but that game was on a neutral floor, and this game is in Madison, where UW's been very successful both this season and generally under Bo, that UW looks like the deeper team, but MU has more backcourt depth. It all comes out to a bit of a wash. Plus, it's a little early in the season for team stats to tell us all that much.

Looking at individual match-ups, things actually look decent for UW. In the backcourt, Hughes bothered the Warriors' backcourt trio last year with his physical D, and will likely do so again. If he can play under control (against McNeal probably) and avoid turnovers while being smartly aggressive, it'd be a solid boost. Then I think Hughes will be able to take his man to the rack, dish a few passes and draw some fouls. UW could then do it's whole "get the other team's key players in foul trouble" thing. Flowers and James will likely match-up, and the key thing there is for Michael to be smart with the ball and avoid foul trouble. He's been turning it over at an alarmingly high rate so far this season, perhaps out of a desire to do a little too much on the offensive end. James is also caging a lot of steals, and will look to drive on Michael. UW is not thick with legitimate guards right now (I count only three), and will need Michael to play lots of good minutes. The Hoft will probably guard Wes, and I'd call that one a bit of a draw, though Joe's having a better year so far and is far more careful with the ball. Both are solid defenders who are not super aggressive offensively. Joe will have to, as per usual, bide his time and be smart on the offensive end.

The guys I'm really worried about are the relative unknowns-- Hayward and Cubillan. I have little memory of this Hayward character for Marquette, and his shooting from close range is impressive. Landry will probably draw him, and while he's going to have to play a solid defensive game, UW's bigs must look to help out. I don't know who'll match-up on Cubillan and I'm worried he's going to get lost in the three-guard shuffle, and get open to nail timely threes.

Fitzgerald and Barro and Burke will probably rotate around in the frontcourt. Barro will probably defend Butch pretty well, but he fouls a lot too and the game is in Madison. Fitzgerald plays decent position defense and can hit open jumpers. Him getting matched-up on Butch is a bit of a worry for the Badgers' defensively, as I can see MU looking to set him up outside, and Butch and/or Stiemsma (who likes to camp out in the lane defensively) having trouble getting there. But Butch should be able to post him up on the other end (though his bunny missing habit is very worrying).

While the catalyst for MU may be Cubillan and Hayward, the X-factors for UW are Leuer and Bohannon. After not playing a lick agianst Georgia, Leuer played nearly a whole half against Duke, and 17 minutes against Wofford, being productive offensively in both outings. Hopefully, his floor time will continue to increase. MU has no one on their roster who's size and skill set comes close to Leuer's, and I think he'll pose a match-up problem for them. He could take Barro outside, drive by Fitzgerald, or post up Wes or Hayward.

Bohannon, on the other hand, didn't play against Marquette last season, as Bo went with the more athletic Hughes. I doubt that'll happen this year, as Kam is gone and Marquette essentially starts four guards. In the past few games, Bohannon looks to be more confident offensively, taking jumpers when they're there, and has been driving for some nice midrange shots floaters. (I bet he nailed a ton of those in high school with guys pressing him on the perimeter.) J-Bo isn't a phenomenal athlete, but he has a great touch from all over the court. If he could surprise the Gold with some offense, and not be a liability on defense, it'd be a huge boost for Wisconsin.

So, I think it'll be an interesting game, a contrast in personnel and styles. There are a lot of questions to answer: Will UW match MU's small ball line-up or will they try to exploit their size advantage? Can UW's excellent D bottle up MU's terrific offense? (Duke couldn't do it, by the way.) Did the various Duke games reveal anything about either team? Do their various rankings (UW is 23rd and 29th, while MU is 15th and 11th) mean anything? Which players will step up on each team? How much is the Kohl Center homecourt advantage worth? (As a UW fan, I hope it's a lot.) This looks like a tough, dramatic game that will go down to the wire.