+3 / -3 - Miss St

[bleedbluegold03]

Lots of positives today against a hindered SEC team but hear are my quick +3 / -3 takeaways:

+ Vander Blue: consider me on the cusp of buying what he's selling. Another good performance tomorrow and I think he could ride this way of confidence into a completely new offensive talent

+ Jamil Wilson: an easy argument could be made for other players, but after playing a terrible game yesterday and being benched to start the game, he responded very well. We will get a much better test on what to expect moving forward with tomorrow's game

+ Jake Thomas: much like Van, confidence is the most needed resource for this kid and a 3/3 day behind the arc can definitely light a fire


- Junior Cadougan: 4 TOs overall. he didn't have a horrendous stat line, but he is the lone blemish for Marquette's box score today

- FTs: Anyone care to comment on how we got out paced by 15 FTs today? One could make the argument the refs were subconsciously aware of Miss St's 6 man rotation and inferior talent, but that sort of jumped out at me from a quick glance

- RPI: Can't stress it enough and it doesn't have as much to do with this game as much as our season to date. Outside of a massive upset today, our season from an RPI perspective can not have gone worse through the first 5 er 4 games. We lost to Butler and didn't even get the addition of UNC and OSU on our schedule to bumb the SOS. Obviously some of it is out of our control, but are people satisfied with a (most likely) outcome of Wisconsin and Texas/USC being our best OOC W?

Looking forward to actually watching the game tomorrow. Ring out

[Alan Bykowski, "brewcity77"]

Texas losing to Chaminade may massively help our RPI...unless they lose to USC as well. Texas should be much better if/when Kabongo gets cleared. We could possibly get two sub-200 wins against MSU and USC, that would be awful. Really need Texas to win today. Even a bad season from Texas will likely lead to a better RPI than USC will have.

And USC up 12-5 early not helping.

[dw3dw3dw3]

Don't forget about that payback win against Florida coming up.

+ Vander, hoping he can continue the surge. I also hope those civic center rims don't have anything to do with his shot going in more frequently. They seem a lot more forgiving than most.
+ Jake, nice to see him pull the trigger
+.5 DG, missed some bunnies and had a few TOs but overall seemed to do his thing.
+.5 JW, decent bounce back game, still hoping for more from him
- Junior - Just a little off today, still like the pull up jumpers, those will be crucial
- Rebounding - we had a lot of their misses to rebound, but gave up 14 offensive, that seemed like a lot.
- 2nd half - seemed sloppy, only outscored them by 6. Lot of subs, but just could have been a bit cleaner.

[Gato78]

Not going to get too excited...we should always beat Mississippi Valley State.

[The Reptile]

I think the lack of fouls by MS ST had to do with the fact that they played some zone. It actually was effective early on.

[warriorfan4life]

A big positive for me is just one turnover in the second half. By nature of their playing style, both Blue and Cadougan will commit their share of turnovers. I just hope they keep it to a couple a game and not have many 4-5 turnover games. Yes, Mississippi State is way undermanned, but they have a few young guys who can play (Sword, Thomas, Ware) and they played with effort and energy despite their talent and depth deficiencies. On the whole, I feel light years better about this team then I did a week ago and feel reasonably confident we keep our NCAA streak. If Blue stays next year, I think that group could be really good. Jimmy Dykes made a great point that we have second round type of talent but play with Final Four desire. Well, the talent level goes up next year and a Buzz coached team will never be soft or play without great effort.

[Alan Bykowski, "brewcity77"]

My own +/- 3:

+ Trent Lockett: He was very efficient and did it all. His best scoring output, 3 boards, 4 assists, and 0 turnovers. He's not nearly as quick as most stars we've had, but if we play to his talents he can be a stud.

+ Jake Thomas: I think that last-second make against Butler, despite how it ended, energized him. Great stroke and I hope we can keep finding him on the wing.

+ Davante Gardner: Offensively, he's a beast. Absolutely dominant in the second half and relentless on the offensive glass.

- 43.8%: That's the offensive rebounding percentage for the Bulldogs, and it's way too high. As good as Gardner is on the offensive glass, guys in general need to hit the glass on both ends. That goes double for Blue. He should NEVER be having 0 rebound games.

- Free Throw Disparity: Maybe the refs went easy on a team that only had 7 scholarship guys, but we should NEVER have the opposing team make nearly double the free throws we take. MSU was 17/23, MU was 8/9. We need to drive the lane and draw contact. In terms of being us, we failed yesterday.

- First half turnovers: Glad we settled down in the second half, but 11 turnovers in the first half is too much. Just glad MSU is god awful and incapable of making us pay.

[TheSultan]

I noticed a couple timeouts that Buzz called, one in each half, that looked like he called more to help MSU than MU. Was I reading too much into that?