LATEST STORIES FROM CRACKED SIDEWALKS
Defense and Projections
Last year, in early January, I wrote an article wondering if Defense was Marquette's Achilles Heel. It's worth re-reading, but here is an update.Teams that are elite have good defenses. In particular, over the past five years, here are the average defensive rankings of teams at each level of the NCAA tourney.Won their first game (#34)Sweet Sixteen (#26)Elite Eight (...
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January 25, 2012
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MU, Gtown, Syracuse and Seton Hall claim 14 of top 25 BE players as MU goes for sole possession of 3rd place tonight
No one would have predicted that Marquette and South Florida would be playing for sole possession of 3rd place in the Big East tonight. Marquette enters the Bradley Center tonight for a 7 p.m. start with three of the Top 25 players in the conference this year, a feat matched by Syracuse, Georgetown and Seton Hall that leaves the other 12 teams in the conference with only 11 between...
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January 24, 2012
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Back and Forth: 5-2 Edition
Rob: Good morning. How does 5-2 go with your coffee?Tim: Not bad. Good showing vs. Providence. After holding PC to 41% eFG%, #MUBB is holding the opposition to an eFG% of 45.5% overall, their best since Pomeroy began tracking in '03. And, the turnover rate for #MUBB opponents is a whopping 24.5%.Rob: You know that I care way more about the eFG% defense. It's...
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January 23, 2012
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Bracketology: Jan. 21
It's early. Really early. But the way I see it, the best way to have an accurate feel for what might happen come March is to have an idea of what was going on in the months before March. I decided to take a stab at my own version of bracketology. I've used a compilation of RPI, SOS, Pomeroy and Sagarin computer rankings, Record v Top-100, good wins, bad losses, and non-conference...
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January 21, 2012
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Big East NCAA Teams Becoming Clearer
Since my last view of the tournament horserace back at the start of the year, the tournament picture has become clearer for the Big East. UL has been exposed. WVU and Cincy have proven themselves as solid teams. Marquette, UConn, and Georgetown continue to prove they belong. And Syracuse continues to roll. At this early stage, the league has already sorted itself out into 7 top...
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January 19, 2012
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All-Star Weekend
I just had my first all star experience this past weekend in Saitama, Japan for the BJ League. I also got to participate in the 3 point contest which was a lot of fun. Saitama Super Arena was packed with 14,000 people to watch the best players in the league perform. Saitama is just outside of Tokyo, which made it a perfect host to the festivities.Some of the notable American players...
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January 17, 2012
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Defensive Table: MU 3rd best defense with Otule, 69th best in next eight games, and now 10th best in last four games
I'm sure I've lost most of your interest by now, but I just had to go back and look at the game-by-game defensive performance to figure out when MU's defensive rating started to improve again. With Chris Otule MU gave up an average of 0.82 points per trip, which even after adjusting for some weak offenses gives them a defensive rating of 0.84 (the points per trip against...
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January 17, 2012
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MU puts together top 5 DEFENSIVE effort, allowing only 63 points on 74 trips to beat Louisville
I was bit stunned before writing the previous post to see that Marquette had actually played better defense than offense this year (by a hair) based on the ultimate measure - how many points per trip down the court do you allow? (see www.kenpom.com).Well, the come from behind win against Louisville was even better defense, as MU allowed only 63 points on 74 trips down the court to...
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January 16, 2012
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1st for Buzz – MU defense now ranked higher than offense, and team is playing well except against big offensive rebounders
For the first time since Buzz Williams took over, Marquette’s defense is better than its offense. As of now MU has the 31st best offense in the country (1.112 points per trip) and the 28th best defense (0.906 points allowed per trip), and while this may not last, it’s never even been close under Buzz:<br />table.tableizer-table {border: 1px solid #CCC; font-family: Arial...
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January 15, 2012
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Pomeroy correctly predicted our record preseason - and now has MU on pace for 2nd place
Preseason Big East Player of the Year Ashton Gibbs leads Pitt into the Bradley Center at 1 p.m. CST as the Panthers seek an upset for their FIRST Big East win. Like Dwight Buycks last year, Gibbs has been forced to play out of position at point guard and the Panthers have the worst offense (93.2 points per 100 trips) and worst shooting percentages on both 2-pointers (42.3%) and...
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January 14, 2012
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Gardner-ing Tips
After Davante Gardner's dominant performance against St. John's, I began to wonder if it was an outlier, or the start of a very nice trend. Granted, his career highs in points and rebounds both came along with a career high in minutes, but it seemed to me like had THAT Davante shown up against LSU, Georgetown, and Syracuse, Marquette might have a much better record.One thing...
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January 13, 2012
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While 1 in 6 games (Norf, LSU, Vandy) are a dud for most teams; Gardner & Mayo step up to remind us this may be a Top 10 team
I’m not sure the next time you will see four players as dominant across the board as you saw last night when Davante Gardner, Todd Mayo, DJO and Jae Crowder outscored and outrebounded St. John’s by themselves despite playing just over half the minutes (106 of 200). With help from Junior Cadougan scoring on an early trey and drive to help set the stage for his seven assists,...
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January 12, 2012
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Five Questions with Rumble in the Garden
Blogger friend Pico from Rumble In the Garden sat down with Cracked Sidewalks to answer some questions about the Johnnies. His information is insightful and interesting, and will help you better understand tonight's opponent. Both Anonymous Eagle and Cracked Sidewalks provided provided responses to his questions, so go and check those out too. 1. Can you catch...
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January 10, 2012
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Despite losses, 2 best performances since Otule injury a great sign
While the two losses this week will almost certainly drop Marquette out of the Top 25, the two strong performances broke a miserable 7-game stretch since Chris Otule was injured. As the graph of Game Scores (Margin of victory/defeat + Opponent + or - for home or away), Marquette played like a Top 10 team (90 or higher) six of seven games with Otule, including playing like a national...
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January 07, 2012
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The Season So Far In One Picture
A few years ago I did a similar "DOOMED!!!!" post and then the season promptly turned itself around. I really hope to be just as wrong with this one.The four columns in the picture below are the difference between how well Marquette was predicted to do and how well they actually did in the every game so far. There's a column for Efficiency, Defensive Efficiency...
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January 06, 2012
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Improved Guard Play Will Be Key To Reversing Trends
Tonight, Marquette begins a difficult two-game stretch of road games. Unfortunately, despite the recent conference opening win over Villanova, the Warriors have been slumping. This chart shows the cumulative total of how many points Marquette has been winning (or losing) by since the second Norfolk State game.However, that chart just shows Marquette plateauing, mostly due to...
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January 04, 2012
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An early look at NCAA possibilities.
As the message boards are starting to buzz with talk about how many bids the Big East teams may receive, it is interesting to note this observation:Since expansion in 2006, there have been zero Big East teams with more than four non-conference losses that were subsequently invited to the NCAA tournament.Bad news for the league is that we have five conference teams that have already...
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January 02, 2012
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Closing Time
Welcome back, Dr. Blackheart. Following the Warriors' victory over the Villanova Wildcats to start the Big East season, the Good Doctor hit the keyboard to share his thoughts on the conference opener -- specifically the excruciating close.**************************************** At the of last season, I did a guest piece on late game free throw shooting, where it was pointed...
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January 02, 2012
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December Non-Conference Report
Time to take another look at our non-conference opponents, this time for the month of December. A couple teams took big jumps in their projections, with Norfolk State now projecting as a top-100 RPI team and LSU getting close to cracking the top-50, largely at Marquette's expense. Unfortunately, poor months for Mount St. Mary's, Winthrop, and Jacksonville have all three now...
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January 01, 2012
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Big East kickoff at Noon - top 20 Big East players and MU picked to finish top 4 with conference slumping
<br />table.tableizer-table {border: 1px solid #CCC; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;} .tableizer-table td {padding: 4px; margin: 3px; border: 1px solid #ccc;}<br />.tableizer-table th {background-color: #104E8B; color: #FFF; font-weight: bold;}<br />TeamProj WProj LTrend in PomeroyTop 20 BE players Syracuse153#4 steady all year5, Kris...
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January 01, 2012
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Blogger picks Vandy with Ezeli by 8 1/2 points; but MU defense and bench should win tonight
A look at the match-ups tonight shows that with the return of 6-foot-11 Festus Ezeli against Marquette, the starting squads are virtually even offensively and Vanderbilt is either 2- or 3-inches taller at every position. That combination has one blogger picking a repeat of the LSU game, as he picks Vanderbilt to win by 8.5 points.Here is a match-up player-by-player of the Value...
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December 28, 2011
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Holidays in Japan
We've just wrapped up the first part of the season, and have a few days off along with the All-Star weekend coming up. We just finished playing ten weekends straight of back to back Saturday-Sunday games and I could certainly use a break to recharge. Usually, overseas players always look forward to getting a week to ten days to go home to the states for the holidays. Unfortunately...
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December 26, 2011
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1st Value Add Top 100 of 2012 points to Jae Crowder as All-American
With Marquette beating it's last mid-major opponent of the season last night, with a 64-50 win over UW-Milwaukee (see story here), I thought it would be a good time to run the first calculations of the best players in the country to prepare for Vanderbilt and the entire Big East.I know most of you don’t follow us as much in the offseason, but NBC Sports, ESPN and Sports Illustrated...
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December 23, 2011
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Marquette captures Cheese State hoops title
It wasn't pretty but a win is a win is a win. With Marquette's victory over UW-M on Thursday night they capture the unofficial Cheese State basketball title by defeating each of the other DI men's basketball programs. Earlier this season MU topped UW-Green Bay at the Bradley Center and knocked off top 10 UW-Madison at the Kohl Center.The victory over the Panthers extends...
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December 23, 2011
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Buzz’s defense may have prevented 20-point loss to LSU; possible Otule return could lead MU back to Top 10
Marquette has averaged a “Game Score” of just 79 since losing Chris Otule, only one-point better than UWM’s 78. MU has home court advantage, and UWM does not have the kind of height that caused such problems in the LSU and Washington games. However, Marquette will have to play better offense than they did against LSU to make it 39-0 against UWM Thursday night.<br />...
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December 21, 2011
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