Marquette Post Game Thread | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Marquette Post Game Thread

Ajax disappeared in the 2nd half. Played like a pro in the first half.
 
I really feel like he's close. Come the end of the season he might really be something. He should get 6+ points a game grabbing boards, sprinting past people, and getting a layup/fouled
Yeah, it’s not like he’s a bad ball handler, he just doesn’t really seem to know how to create his own shot. That can be taught and would make him incredibly dangerous.
 
When we shoot even mediocre from 3 we win because it opens up the rest of the court. That trend continued tonight
 
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Martin played big boy ball tonight. Taking it to the rim strong, making open shots and free throws. We wouldn’t have won tonight without him with how bad our post players played… proud of him.

The post play… yikes on both sides of the ball…. Defensive player of the year Whaley got absolutely abused by Lewis all game and Sanogo was a no-show (to be expected). Akok hit a few 3s but got abused on D as well like Whaley.

Cole gave us his usual great effort.

Ajax played a reasonably good game aside for some defensive lapses and couple of shot-put shots.

Polley and Gaffney… what else is there to say at this point that hasn’t already been said. Everyone can see it except Hurley apparently.

Coaching - Hurley let them back in the game again at the 10 min mark sitting Cole and Martin for Gaffney and Polley. We were up 10 and by the time he put them back in we were up 2. We can’t have Cole and Martin sit at the same time ever unless we’re blowing a team out. Also it took until 2 min left in the game for him to figure out that Whaley couldn’t handle Lewis 1 on 1 and to double and when we finally did we shut him down the last few possessions.

Ugly win against a short handed team on the road but we’ll take it. On to Xavier.
 
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When we shoot even mediocre from 3 we win because it opens up the rest of the court. That trend continued tonight
It was not a clinic on basketball playing but I will take a Win when offered.
 
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This team isn’t great yet. It’s just a good team.

Any road Big East game will be tough, there aren’t many teams you’re blowing out in this league besides Georgetown.
 
I’m glad we won. That said.

There is no excuse for playing Polley and Gaffney as much anymore. Gaffney is lost and turns the ball over on the offensive end, and fouls on the defensive end. Polley is an absolute defensive liability and gives nothing to the team besides streaky shooting (streaky is generous). We have to figure out a way to get Hawkins going. Also, I love Whaley but he has a limited ceiling and has literally gotten worse at basketball and I would rather Akok and Johnson get some of his minutes. If he isn’t a back to the basket big, he doesn’t help us offensively.

Defensively, Hurley needs to STOP hard hedging screens. It doesn’t create turnovers and then the opposing big slips and we rotate leaving weak side three point shooting WIDE OPEN.

Adama needs to pass out of the post. He didn’t a single time tonight. Had multiple turnovers and several shots that didn’t have a chance.

For a team so long, we get nothing at the rim. Did we dunk at all this game?

Also given the Hurley quote this week about age, the Marquette fresh and sophs certainly gave UConn everything we could handle. Thank god Darryl Morsell was out. We have such a long way to go.
Absurd. Polley and Gaffney will continue to play significant minutes. And nailing them to the pine would be coaching malfeasance.
 
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Wonder if we will still run this 9 man rotation out there moving forward. Part of me thinks yes but I don’t know who’s minutes would be cut. Can’t sit Gaff bc we need another ball handler off the bench…maybe Polley if his shot doesn’t come around and defense isn’t there? I thought I read somewhere here Hurley wanted to condense it down to about 7.
 
The reffing in this game was bizarre and something we’ve seen a couple this year. The first 10-12 minutes they basically just let them play through almost any contact. Then at some point it just switched and all of a sudden the most ticky tacky fouls are getting called. It seemed pretty consistently inconsistent between both teams but just odd to see it change that drastically.
 
I have this idea that we need to save our coach bashing for post game rants when we loose.
Not when we win DESPITE our coach. Same issues tonight, we just overcame them. Focusing on results only is fools gold. Eventually if you don’t fix things they catch up to you.
 
Wonder if we will still run this 9 man rotation out there moving forward. Part of me thinks yes but I don’t know who’s minutes would be cut. Can’t sit Gaff bc we need another ball handler off the bench…maybe Polley if his shot doesn’t come around and defense isn’t there? I thought I read somewhere here Hurley wanted to condense it down to about 7.
We can absolutely sit Gaff. In fact, we need to. We found our ball handles off a press- it’s Martin and Cole. They are just fine passing it off to a big on the other side of the court.

Nothing good happens when Gaff is in. Give Gaffs little minutes to Diggins.
 
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The reffing in this game was bizarre and something we’ve seen a couple this year. The first 10-12 minutes they basically just let them play through almost any contact. Then at some point it just switched and all of a sudden the most ticky tacky fouls are getting called. It seemed pretty consistently inconsistent between both teams but just odd to see it change that drastically.
It feels like they want to make sure no one fouls out/picks up fouls early on, then once it starts to matter they call fouls. Your classic mens league reffing philosophy when both teams only have 5 guys lol.
 
He didn’t play polley and gaffney as much. Didn’t you watch the game? Unfortunately the two of them are playing poorly. We would be a much better team if they stepped up their games. How would you coach them to do that? Sounds like you would just kick them off the team?
 
This is the 2nd or 3rd time this year we’ve gone up double digits and Hurley sits Cole and Martin and the lead immediately evaporates. That cannot happen again. We do not have the offensive firepower to sit our 2 best scorers at the same time and frankly I’m not sure what Hurley thinks when he does it??
 
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“Better teams” as we get a Quad 1 win.
Im stoked we won tonight, but teams are abusing our hard hedging. Go back to the Prov game and look at why they got layup after layup in the first half. Marquette got wide open shots in the second half and missed.
 
This is a weird take… better teams would thrash us the way we’ve been playing. We won on the road it’s important but we need to play a lot better
Calling Marquette a “bad” team is wild. They’ve beaten Illinois, Ole Miss, and West Virginia this year and played UCLA to the wire. They’re not the elite of the conference but calling them “bad” is the weird take.
 
The reffing in this game was bizarre and something we’ve seen a couple this year. The first 10-12 minutes they basically just let them play through almost any contact. Then at some point it just switched and all of a sudden the most ticky tacky fouls are getting called. It seemed pretty consistently inconsistent between both teams but just odd to see it change that drastically.
Some of it is because the teams started fouling more. Guys are fresher in beginning and tire as game goes on. Marquette also ramped up the defensive physicality and started pounding the ball inside on offense in post-ups. Both things lead to more fouls.

But yeah, the refs fell for a couple flops, got a couple obvious calls wrong, but we also benefitted from a couple ticky-tacks on drivers, too. Overall we got a bad whistle, but about par for being on road and not abysmal.
 
Interesting to see that Hurley had a much quicker hook on Gaffney and was much quicker to get Cole back in the game after a rest
I also felt like gaffe was trying to be more decisive with the ball on the offense.
 
Calling Marquette a “bad” team is wild. They’ve beaten Illinois, Ole Miss, and West Virginia this year and played UCLA to the wire. They’re not the elite of the conference but calling them “bad” is the weird take.
They’re not “bad,” they were short-handed tonight however. The game would have been much closer if Morsell played though. Martin wouldn’t have gotten whatever he wanted if he played.
 
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