Where Should Marquette be Seeded?

First of all, congrats are in order for DJO making Second Team All Big East and Jimmy Butler getting an Honorable mention.  Well done guys, if I had it my way you'd both be on the First Team.

Now onto the important stuff.  To those of you that follow Cracked Sidewalks, you've probably seen this already but there's a website called The 2011 Bracket Matrix, which you can see here.  This is a pretty neat site, in that it compiles bracket projections from all different types of websites, from the big guys like ESPN and CBS to other sites like Bracketography that do nothing but predict the 64-team field.  All of the seedings are summed up and averaged so you can see the consensus seed for each team.

This site was last updated this morning so it's about as recent as we're gonna get.  With that in mind, believe it or not, MU is currently a 10-seed on it.  Of the 81 brackets on the site, here's our breakdown in terms of seed projection:
 

Seed	# of Brackets	% of Total
7	1	1.2%
8	2	2.5%
9	10	12.3%
10	35	43.2%
11	21	25.9%
12	8	9.9%
Out	4	4.9%
Total	81	100.0%

Not bad.  5% have us out of the dance, and 85% have us as an 11-seed or higher.  However, if you go to the site, you'll see one major caveat, which is that not all of the brackets are updated as of 3/7, some are about a week old.  Here's a table showing the "As of" dates:

 

Date	# of Brackets	% of Total
2/28	9	11.1%
3/1	2	2.5%
3/3	4	4.9%
3/4	9	11.1%
3/5	2	2.5%
3/6	23	28.4%
3/7	32	39.5%
Total	81	100.0%

Could be better, but it looks like about 70% of the brackets are completely up to date, 30% are missing the loss to Seton Hall, and about 15% don't include the loss to Cincy.  There's some decent information coming from this site, but take it with a grain of salt until at least all of these brackets are updated through 3/7.

With that in mind, let's take a look at a few other factors the Committee is going to look at:

Record: 18-12
Conference Record: 9-9
Record over last 10 games: 5-5
RPI: 68
Strength of Schedule Rank: 31
Record against Top 25 RPI: 4-6
Record against Top 50 RPI: 4-11
Record against RPI 50-100: 3-2
Record against RPI over 100: 11-0
Out of Conference RPI: 122

Pretty mixed bag of figures here.  Here's the way I see it:

Pros
- Record against Top 25 RPI.  Going just under .500 against the cream of the crop looks very good, and those 4 quality wins against West Virginia, Notre Dame, Syracuse, and UConn will look very favorable in front of the Committee.  They want to see that we're both capable of winning big games and winning on the road, and we've done both of those with this stat.
- Strength of Schedule.  31st toughest schedule will show that we're tournament tested and won't be intimidated by anyone we'll face if we make the dance.  Heck, the Big East Tournament is practically a NCAA Tournament with 16 teams and a ton of talent.
- Record against RPI over 100.  No bad losses is good news for MU.  Seton Hall's RPI is 91 so we just snuck in there with an unblemished record against bad teams.

Cons
- Record against Top 50 RPI.  Compare this to the record against the top 25, and it basically says we've gone 0-5 against the 26-50 in the RPI.  These teams are the complete cream of the crop, but they're pretty close.  Hopefully the Commitee puts more weight on the top 25 than the top 50.
- Record over last 10 games.  The Committee likes to see who's on a hot streak, and at this point we're anything but.  Had we beaten St. John's, Cincy, and Seton Hall we'd be in a different boat, but at this point we just look flat, if not worse.
- Out of Conference RPI.  The Comittee, especially over the last few years, has put extra emphasis on the entire body of work, from mid-November to mid-March.  Our weak RPI from November to December won't look very good to the Committee, and this could be the difference between a 12-seed and NIT.

Enough with the numbers Dan, what seed are we getting, if any???

Tough to say at this point, as the Big East Tournament is a big factor in deciding our future.  At this point, I'm assuming we beat Providence, and fall to West Virginia in the second round.  Between our quality wins and tough schedule, I think the Committee will look favorable on us.  Along with this, there's the "soft bubble" that the media has been talking about.  What this means is that the Butlers and Gonzagas of the world aren't as good as they've been in recent years which means they won't get high seeds and push power conference teams to higher seeds, as well as other power conference teams out of the tournament.  This means there's more room for the bubble teams like ourselves (and yes, that's a good thing).  With this in mind, I think when it's all said and done we'll have done enough in the Committee's mind to come out with an eleven seed.  I'll readily admit I've been wrong before (just look at my pre-season predictions), but that's my prediction-du-jour and I'm sticking to it until I decide to change my mind.

MU Finishes Regular Season With An Embarrassing Loss to Seton Hall

No recap of the game today, but to those that didn't see, MU had a terrible performance in Newark with a 13-point loss.  The game was over after the tip, and we never pulled within 8 points of the pirates after the first 5 minutes.  MU finished 9-9 in conference play and takes on Providence Tuesday night at 8 pm in the BE tourney.

Here are a couple recaps of the game:

Cracked Sidewalks: The last time we lost to Seton Hall, gas cost 23 cents a gallon
Todd Rosiak: MU turns in its worst performance of the season

Jimmy Butler Scores 30 as Marquette falls to Cincy on Senior Night

With a bid to the NCAA Tournament still on the line, MU had a crucial home match-up against Cincinnati Wednesday night.  With a win, we would've been on pace to finish 11-7 in conference play and secure a bye in the Big East Tournament.  Cincy, on the other hand, had a different plan in mind, and simply outplayed us and won 67-60.  With the loss, we're now 9-8 in conference play and desperately need a win at Seton Hall on Saturday.

The calling card of the bearcats is their defense, and this was very apparent last night.  Cincy played a 2-3 zone against us that we just couldn't seem to figure out.  We had a tough time finding guys to get open which lead to costly turnovers.  Their full-court press seemed to stifle us too, as if we'd never seen a press before.  Junior Cadougan made a few foolish passes across the key that turned into easy buckets for the bearcats and killed any momentum we had.  Along with the turnovers, we had a poor shooting night (39% from the field, 20% from the three) which kept us from gaining any traction against the bearcats.

At the half, MU was down by 6 and had a pathetic 3 assists matched with 9 turnovers.  In the second half, Cincy played good enough on defense (or maybe we played poor enough on offense) that we never were able to get within 5 points down the stretch.  With a minute to go and a 5-point deficit, Marquette had a phenomenal chance to get back in the game with two open 3-point opportunities (I believe DJO and Buycks had the open looks) but hesitated on both which ultimately resulted in a missed shot, a Cincy rebound,and 20 crucial seconds burned off the clock.  At that point, we were down too much to stage a comeback through fouling and the bearcats held on to win by 7.

After turning the ball over 11 times on 57 possessions against Cincy, this is now the second game in a row where we've turned over the ball on at least 19% of our possessions (AAAHHHH!!!).  Once may be a fluke, but twice is a trend, and if the trend continues, then we picked the absolute worst time to up our turnovers.  The question is: what's causing this?  Is it the fact that we're still a young team?  Is Cadougan trying to do too much in the point guard role?  Did the pressure of winning a game on senior night for the first time in three years prove to be too much?  Whatever it is, Buzz has 3 days to fix it on the road and 2 more days to prep for the Big East Tournament.  Maybe... I don't know... work on beating the press???  But I digress...

A couple bright spots despite the loss.  As usual, we won the foul situation, 22-10.  Unfortunately Cincy runs 9 deep each game so there was never an opportunity to get their guys in serious foul trouble.  The other, and more important, point of the night was Jimmy Butler's performance in his last home game in a gold uniform.  I'm sure his back was killing him after the game, because he absolutely carried us for 40 minutes.  Every time we had nothing going on offense, Butler took the game in his hands and made a spectacular cut to the rim to both draw contact and put points on the board.  Butler finished the game with 30 points, 6 boards, and 3 steals (did I mention he went 15-17 from the charity stripe?).  Well done Jimmy, we're going to miss you.

Nothing major to take away from the Senior Night speeches.  Rob Frozena by far got the most applause when it was his turn to talk.  Speaking of Frozena, you've gotta give this guy tons of credit.  He worked just as hard as everybody else on the team and got virtually no playing time to show for it (18 career points, 12 less than Jimmy Butler scored last night).  Congrats to Rob on being the first ever four-year walk-on to play for Marquette.  There's a lot to be said for what you've done as a student athlete.

Oh, and one more thing...  Dear Students: Please show up to the MU home games next year.  If I can make the 90-mile drive, you can make the 12-block walk.  Thank you.

More on the Tiebreaker Situation

John Pudner from Cracked Sidewalks has put up an explanation of MU's tiebreaker situation here.  It's very well-detailed and is just as good, if not better, than I could explain it.  Whatever way you look at it though, we need to win our next 2 games to rise to the top of the 5-team logjam.

MU Takes Care of Business Against Providence

After a crucial victory on the road against UConn, the golden eagles returned home and beat up on a helpless Friars squad in a 86-62 victory.  Marquette finished the week 2-0 and has 2 games remaining before the Big East Tournament in New York.  With the win, we're 9-7 in conference play and in a 5-way tie in the BE standings.

Marquette started out on a 10-0 run in this game and never seemed to look back.  Between cold shooting from Providence and solid defense and rebounding from MU, the friars never had a chance.  While Providence would go on a 5 or 7-point run at a couple points in the game, we always had an answer with a run of our own.

Given the final score, there's mostly positives to take away from this game.  5 guys scored in double figures: Butler, Otule, Cadougan, DJO, and Crowder.  As usual, Crowder was a beast on the inside grabbing boards and causing havoc in the paint on defense.  Junior Cadougan had a career night with 10 points, 10 assists, and 6 boards.  He made some great passes to the interior that translated into easy points.

The defense was also much improved, as they only allowed 0.78 points per defensive possession today.  We did a much better job of rotating on defense which seemed to frustrate the friars throughout the game.  Part of their poor shooting percentage (32%) was due to them taking long-range contested shots that they should never be taking in the first place.  Combine that with being out-rebounded 37-15 in their end of the floor and it made for a long afternoon for Providence.

The main negative today was turnovers, as MU turned the ball over on 22% of their possessions.  Most of these were head-scratching passes that lead to fast break points on the other end for Providence.  At one point in the second half when the friars began to press, we inexplicably turned the ball over twice before crossing the timeline which gave Providence 4 easy points.  This is probably a one-off scenario given the fact that we only turn the ball over 18% of the time on offense, but nonetheless this was something you never want to see again.

On a side note, fans got a serious scare from DJO when he hit the floor hard after making a drive to the rim in transition in the second half.  He landed on his right elbow and didn't get off the floor for a few seconds.  The first thing that went through my head was "Great... Travis Diener, Jerel McNeal, Dominic James, and now DJO is next in line to get seriously injured at the end of the season."  Thankfully, he was just out for a couple minutes and came back in and played like he hadn't missed a beat.  Definitely didn't need to say that during a blowout victory on a Sunday afternoon.

Big East Standings

As of now, here's where the Big East stands from top to bottom, courtesy of the Big East's website:

Standings	Conference	Pct.	PF	PA		Overall	Pct.	PF	PA		Home	Away	Neutral	Last 10	Streak
Pittsburgh	13-3	.813	70.1	61.3		25-4	.862	74.8	61.2		16-1	6-2	3-1	7-3	L 1
Notre Dame	12-4	.750	70.4	66.6		23-5	.821	75.1	65.2		16-0	4-4	3-1	9-1	W 2
Louisville	11-5	.688	69.2	65.6		22-7	.759	75.0	64.2		18-2	4-5	0-0	7-3	W 3
St. John's	11-5	.688	66.9	65.6		19-9	.679	70.1	65.8		11-3	5-6	3-0	8-2	W 6
Syracuse	11-6	.647	68.7	65.5		24-6	.800	72.4	62.7		15-3	6-3	3-0	6-4	W 4
Georgetown	10-7	.588	65.9	65.0		21-8	.724	72.2	65.6		10-4	7-4	4-0	7-3	L 2
Cincinnati	9-7	.563	64.4	62.7		22-7	.759	69.0	58.5		14-3	7-4	1-0	6-4	L 1
Connecticut	9-7	.563	68.7	67.4		21-7	.750	73.2	65.9		13-3	5-4	3-0	5-5	W 1
Villanova	9-7	.563	71.2	68.2		21-8	.724	73.7	64.7		13-4	7-3	1-1	4-6	L 2
West Virginia	9-7	.563	65.4	62.6		18-10	.643	69.9	64.1		10-2	5-6	3-2	5-5	W 1
Marquette	9-7	.563	74.1	70.1		18-11	.621	77.4	68.6		14-3	4-6	0-2	5-5	W 3
Seton Hall	5-11	.313	62.8	66.2		11-17	.393	66.2	65.0		6-7	4-7	1-3	3-7	L 3
Rutgers	4-12	.250	64.1	69.3		13-15	.464	65.8	65.2		10-6	2-7	1-2	2-8	L 4
Providence	3-13	.188	73.1	79.8		14-15	.483	76.7	74.6		13-5	0-9	1-1	3-7	L 6
USF	3-13	.188	63.1	69.6		9-20	.310	62.3	65.6		7-8	1-11	1-1	2-8	W 1
DePaul	1-15	.063	64.9	77.9		7-21	.250	68.2	75.2		6-10	1-8	0-3	1-9	L 3

Like I said, we're in a 5-way tie (which Buzz had predicted before the season started would be the result at the end of the season) with Cincinnati, 'Nova, West Virginia, and UConn.  If the golden eagles can take care of business against Cincinnati and Seton Hall, that would put as at 11-7 and should give us a bye in the first round of the Big East Tournament.  As you can see, things have gotten pretty hairy.  To check out how tie-breakers work, you can read it here.  Basically, if we're in a tie with at least 2 other teams, those teams are turned into a "mini-conference" and the records of each team against those other teams in the tie-breaker are stacked up.  So for instance, if we're in a tie with UConn and West Virginia, we'd be 2-1 in that "mini-conference" and that record would get stacked against the records of UConn and West Virginia.  2-team tie-breaker rules would apply if UConn or West Va. also went 2-1 in the mini-conference.

Given the schedules the other teams still have ('Nova plays ND and Pitt, UConn and West Va play each other, WVU also plays ND), and if we beat Cincy that of course knocks them out of the equation, we have a good shot at passing all of these teams and getting at least a 7-seed in the tournament.  There's still a lot of basketball yet to be played, but right now we're looking a lot better than we were 10 days ago.

MU Downs the Huskies in Overtime!

Finally, the golden eagles came up with a signature win to bolster their tournament resume with a 74-67 victory in overtime against UConn in Hartford.  With the win, Marquette improved to 17-11 and 8-7 in conference play.

The huskies got out to a quick 11-3 lead, but MU stormed back through solid zone defense and interior scoring.  With a 3-point lead, Dwight Buycks was fouled making a 3-pointer and converted the 4-point play to put the golden eagles up 7.  UConn also had a poor 20 minutes of shooting which MU was able to capitalize on.  At the end of the half, Jimmy Butler made a tough 20-footer to put Marquette up by 11 at the half, and things were looking great.

But we've all seen this before, and just like the other times, we coughed up the lead and let UConn right back in the game.  The huskies dominated the glass in the second half and Kemba Walker began to take over the game and simply couldn't miss.  The same shooting woes that UConn had in the first half transferred to Marquette in the second half, and the golden eagles didn't score a field goal until the 8th minute in the half when Dwight Buycks drained a three.  Surprisingly, Vander Blue was one of our only sources of offense during those 8 minutes as he managed to draw contact on a couple drives and knock down his free throws.  Jae Crowder made a couple dumb fouls early on in the second half and played with 4 fouls most of the way.  Things weren't looking good down the stretch in Hartford.

With the final minutes winding down, the game became incredibly tight, and missed rebounds caused Marquette to blow its chance to put the game away in regulation.  Down 2 with 35 seconds, UConn took the ball up the floor, and after a clutch steal, shot fake, and layup by Darius Johnson-Odom, the golden eagles had tied the game at 59 apiece.  UConn couldn't convert in the final seconds which took the game to overtime.

From there, MU put up an impressive performance in its first overtime game of the year and was in control the whole way.  Where Kemba Walker left off, DJO picked up and had 9 of his 17 points in OT.  Marquette made its free throws down the stretch and UConn turned the ball over too many times to put up a fight.

Tonight was not our most impressive night offensively.  The golden eagles average 1.16 points per possession, and tonight they had just 1 point per possession.  20% from 3-point range (0-7 for DJO) and 37% overall from the field.  Although Jimmy Butler had his usual performance with 16 points, he was cold at times from the floor too, going 6-16 overall.  Some of the shots he took were ones he'd normally pass away, and even missed a few easy layups.  But since he played for 44 of the 45 minutes you still gotta give him props.

Like I said before, UConn dominated the golden eagles on the boards.  Tally at the end was 52-39 UConn.  The most frustrating part about this was a lot of those boards could've or did go Marquette's way, but they just seemed to cough the ball up to UConn before we had clear possession of it.  The huskies are one of the tallest teams in the country, so I guess I can live with this.

The real difference maker for MU was turnovers, as we dominated on this front 17-8.  Despite DJO's shooting woes during regulation, he came up with four steals during the game, including the one that eventually put the game into overtime.  Teams like us that are offensively lop-sided need to win this battle to have a fighting chance against the top-tier teams.

From a defensive standpoint, I think we did a poor job of defending jump shots.  Between fighting off ball screens and rotating on double-teams to the open man, MU left too many huskies open for three-pointers on the perimeter.  While those shots didn't fall for UConn in the first half, they definitely began to fall in the second half.  What was especially troubling about this was it wasn't just one player, it was Buycks, DJO, Butler, etc.  This leads me to believe it's a coaching issue, and something Buzz needs to fix asap so that Marshon Brooks doesn't put up 52 points against us this Sunday.

On a side note, Buzz went hoarse from yelling during the first half and couldn't even speak to the team at halftime.  Gotta love it.

This win will do some good for us in terms of RPI.  UConn's currently 13th in the RPI, and our road win over them will certainly move us up a few pegs.  Don't ask me why, but the NCAA tournament committee practically lives and dies by the RPI.  It's a good measuring stick for a team, but it leaves out the all-important "eye test."

A side note on Jim Calhoun not coaching tonight.  Say what you want about us beating a "Calhoun-less" team, it's still a quality win.  The RPI doesn't say "Oh, this win isn't as good because Jim Calhoun wasn't coaching."  The UConn players clearly weren't lost without him, otherwise they wouldn't have fought back in the second half to regain the lead.  Kemba Walker was still Kemba Walker tonight regardless of who was coaching on the sidelines, UConn just happened to get beaten by a team who was desperate for a road win.  And was today George Blaney's first day ever coaching a team, or even coaching UConn?  Of course not.  Yeah, there may be some bias in saying all of this, but I hope you get my point.

Marquette returns to Mil-town to take on Providence this Sunday.

Answer to the Trivia Question: Jerel McNeal is MU's all-time leader in steals with 287.

Marquette Dominates the Boards En Route to a 73-64 Victory Over Seton Hall

After St. John's handed the golden eagles their first double-digit loss of the season, they bounced back with a 9-point win over the Seton Hall Pirates at the Bradley Center on Saturday.  MU is now 16-11 on the season and 7-7 in conference play.

The first half was pretty evenly matched, with MU winning the battle on the glass, but coughing up turnovers to keep Seton Hall in the game.  In the second half, MU exerted its home court dominance in several key areas to pull away from Seton Hall for good.

Here's what went well for MU:

- Rebounds.  Marquette out-rebounded Seton Hall 39-21 (12-6 on offensive boards).  The Marquette bigs did a great job of boxing out on missed shots, which resulted in a lot of boards.  A few of them, including one from Joe Fulce, were simply jump balls that Marquette came up with due to better hustle.  Because of this, Seton Hall never went on more than a 5 or 6-point run, which kept them from gaining any momentum.

- Fouls.  We all know this is part of MU's bread-and-butter this season, and last night's contest was no different.  Not only did Marquette take 15 more shots from the foul line than Seton Hall, but two of Seton Hall's big men, Herb Pope and Patrik Auda, fouled out with key minutes remaining.  Chris Otule can be credited with drawing most of the contact from these guys.  Keeping these two bigs on the bench opened up the paint for MU to make back-door cuts and create passing lanes on the strong side of the rack.

- MU's Big Men.  Despite getting into foul trouble, Chris Otule had a monster night for the time he was on the floor.  In just 20 minutes, Otule put up 10 points, 8 boards, and a block.  He was well-positioned under the hoop for the easy putback shots which kept MU in the game during their cold shooting streaks in the first half.  Davante Gardner also had another efficient game, with 7 points and 6 boards in just 11 minutes.  With every game I'm seeing both of these guys get better and better, and it makes me feel a lot better about how good our front-court is going to be next season.  If Gardner can drop about 15-20 pounds over this summer, he's going to be incredibly dangerous next year.

And now what didn't go so well for the golden eagles:

Turnovers.  Marquette lost the turnover battle last night 14-9 on 66 possessions.  At a rate of 21%, this was clearly a poor night for taking care of the basketball.  The frustrating part wasn't that Seton Hall played phenomenal defense to force those turnovers, but that Marquette beat themselves to cough up the ball.  Drives into traffic by Cadougan and Blue with no outlet lead to Seton Hall possessions which kept us from creating any kind of sizable lead in the first half.  This is a team that has to dominate on offense to beat the great teams, and stats like turnovers absolutely kill an offense.

Vander Blue.  While I have great hopes for him in the coming years, he's a serious liability on offense.  8 times out of 10 he'll drive to the hoop without looking for the open man which results in Seton Hall getting the basketball (Blue had 3 of the 14 MU turnovers).  While he does play great on-the-ball defense, he'll need to step up his game on the other end of the floor to take a leadership role with this team.  2-pointers, assists, free throws, I don't care what it is, just not turnovers.

And the mediocre stat of the night?

Free throws.  The woes from the charity stripe continued in the first half as MU shot an "impressive" 2-10 from the line.  The second half was much much better, as they shot 14-16 on free throws.  The overall result?  62%.  I at least felt "ok" about our free throws after that second half.

Enough about the game, Dan.  Are we going to make the tournament?

I think there are two scenarios that guarantee us a bid to The Dance.  The first scenario: win out in the regular season.  An 11-7 conference record with a road win over UConn would give us the resume we need to get in.  The second scenario: lose at UConn, win the other 3 conference games, and win 2 games in the Big East Tournament.  A 10-win record in Big East play and 21 overall wins (I think we need 21 wins instead of 20 given our woes on the road) will also get us in the dance.  While I'd love to see the first scenario play out, the second is more realistic. Maybe 20 wins puts us in the dance, but with the amount of teams vying for bids from the Big East, and the fact that we can't win on the road, I don't think we're guaranteed a ticket with 20 wins.