Monday, January 04, 2010

Another Heartbreaker For Marquette

#8 Villanova 74, Marquette 72
Scottie Reynolds hit the go-ahead shot with about 18 seconds to go, Marquette failed to score on their own end, and then they failed to score again after Reggie Redding's missed free throw gave them another chance to tie or win. It has not just been the heartbreaking loss to West Virginia a few days ago, as this team also had a painful collapse against NC State as well as another heartbreaker to Florida State back in November. At some point this becomes luck, because no team loses infinite close games in a row, but some of this has to come down to Marquette's youth, as well as their high tempo, slightly wild style, which lends itself to more stupid mistakes than other systems. Pomeroy gives Marquette a Luck ranking of 344th and a Consistency ranking of 286th. Both Sagarin and Pomeroy still insist that Marquette is around the 20th-25th best team in the nation, but I don't buy it. I think they will have lower-than-average Luck and Consistency all season, and it will cause them to underperform the talent that they have. The other concern for Marquette is that they have all of their tough Big East games in the front of the schedule, and risk becoming demoralized if they get too far below .500. They play Georgetown Wednesday night before heading to Villanova, but are done playing teams from the current Top 25 after January 30th. If Marquette can pull an upset over one or two of these ranked teams and finish strong against their weak February and March schedule to get to 10-8 in conference play then they'll have an excellent shot to go Dancing. As for Villanova, their Big East schedule is backloaded, and so should get off to a very quick start. Considering their high-risk offensive style (near complete dependency on three-pointers) they have the capability of falling to inferior teams, so a key to Villanova's chances of winning the Big East will be rolling through these easy games and staying undefeated until they head to Georgetown on February 6th.

#3 Kentucky 71, Louisville 62
We knew that John Wall was going to be the best basketball player on this Kentucky team, but I did not see him becoming the leader. Patrick Patterson has been the emotional leader of this team for a couple of years now, but it increasingly seems like the team responds more to Wall this season. Of course, this doesn't mean that all of the freshmen are maturing quickly, as DeMarcus Cousins continues to melt down in stressful situations. I don't even know how many times this season he's been benched because he lost his cool and committed stupid fouls or nearly got in a brawl. Cousins is a dominant physical force (he had 18 points and 18 rebounds here), but Calipari has to get his head in shape before the Tournament or he's going to be a ticking time bomb under the stress. Louisville showed nice resilience clawing their way back into this game after their absolutely atrocious shooting early in the first half. Even some hot second half shooting couldn't get their shooting percentage above 32.2% for the game. But this goes down as another missed opportunity, and while Rick Pitino's teams are famous for slow starts and quick finishes, they have really given themselves a hill to climb. They now finish 9-4 in their out-of-conference schedule which Pomeroy rates 231st in difficulty. They finish with no good wins (Arkansas and Western Kentucky are the best), and multiple bad losses (Western Carolina and Charlotte). Both Pomeroy and Sagarin think that Louisville is around the 40th best team in the country, and that sounds about right to me, but at some point you've got to start winning games against good opponents. Louisville probably needs to get to 10-8 in the Big East just to make the NCAA Tournament. They are 1-0 with a home victory over South Florida, and next head to Providence on Wednesday evening.

Oregon 90, #16 Washington 76
If Washington players and fans thought that the Pac-10 would be a cakewalk this season, they got a reality check in their second game by getting rocked by an underrated Oregon team. Washington's small lineup (which basically contains only one inside player - Quincy Pondexter) was exposed by Oregon's rapidly improving big man, 6'10" Michael Dunnigan, who went for 20 points and a career-high 14 boards. Malcolm Armstead has become a good backcourt mate for Tajuan Porter, and if highly touted recruit Jamil Wilson can do a better job of fulfilling the preseason hype then Oregon will really start having a very nice starting five. Keeping in mind that USC has now eliminated themselves from postseason contention, I think it's pretty clear that Oregon and Arizona State are in the best positions to earn the Pac-10's third NCAA Tournament berth. As for Washington, they still have yet to collect a good win, and their weak schedule is not going to do them any favors. I believe that Washington has a great shot for a 2 or 3 seed in the Tournament if they can run through the Pac-10 with a 14-4 or 15-3 record, but this is a bad start. Washington fans have to hope that this was just the reality check that this young team needed and that they'll wake up and go on a roll now.

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