Still bullish on basketball

[Sbee]

hear me out, disagree if you want but a few points about the other night, it's a perfect storm.

Texas southern was 1-9, that's awful, but keep in mind that they were horrible in the non conference last year and won their conference, made the tournament. they also didn't have their leading scorer until the prior game, Thomas was ineligible for the first semester, but then he scored 22 against us. other non conference losses without him were @ Indiana, Tennessee, Baylor, Florida, and Gonzaga. this team plays everyone and then plays well in their conference.

TSU did a great job of holding the ball, shortening the game and hitting big shots late in the shot clock

we have our worst night from the 3 all year, missing a lot of open shots

we end up playing Wolenman and bess at the 4 all night because Dawson is out and Izzo decides to teach Clark a lesson. Bess was gassed, not in good enough shape to log a lot of minutes

our best remaining players had off nights, Trice shot it poorly and Valentine wasn't good and was in foul trouble

If this team ever gets healthy, I expect us still to be top 3 in the big ten, depending on Dawson. my original prediction of 12-6 was assuming a win against Maryland at home, now that depends on Dawson and what he can give in that game, I don't think we win without him so i'd revise it to 11-7.

I think the talk of being a bubble team is way premature

 

[MSUMatt28]

It's hard to tell what to make of the Big Ten. They won the Big Ten/ACC challenge when the ACC was supposed to be really good, but lots of ugly non-conference losses mixed in there. 11-7 would probably land a bid. 10-8 probably will not. Letting both the Kansas and Notre Dame games get away at the end is going to sting. Winning 1 of those 2 would have allowed for the hiccup vs Texas Southern. It also leaves us with Marquette as the best non-conference win and that is not going to be considered a quality win.

As for the team itself, I don't know. They will beat some teams at home, but I'm not sure they guard well enough (even with Dawson) to get the wins on the road that they'll need.

 

[SpartyNash]

It's hard to tell what to make of the Big Ten. They won the Big Ten/ACC challenge when the ACC was supposed to be really good, but lots of ugly non-conference losses mixed in there. 11-7 would probably land a bid. 10-8 probably will not. Letting both the Kansas and Notre Dame games get away at the end is going to sting. Winning 1 of those 2 would have allowed for the hiccup vs Texas Southern. It also leaves us with Marquette as the best non-conference win and that is not going to be considered a quality win.

As for the team itself, I don't know. They will beat some teams at home, but I'm not sure they guard well enough (even with Dawson) to get the wins on the road that they'll need.

I disagree, 10-8 in the Big Ten most likely would get us in, despite our lack of a solid nonconference win. If we were in the SEC then I would agree, but even though I think the conference is down, 10-8 is good enough in the B1G. No conference looks dominant this year in my opinion.

 

[MSUMatt28]

I disagree, 10-8 in the Big Ten most likely would get us in, despite our lack of a solid nonconference win. If we were in the SEC then I would agree, but even though I think the conference is down, 10-8 is good enough in the B1G. No conference looks dominant this year in my opinion.

Maybe. 10-8 probably gets you into a "better not lose your first BTT game to a bottom feeder" position with regards to the NCAAs.

This is assuming of course that they don't lose to the Citadel tonight.

 

[Spartanmack]

TSU's 3 previous games - lost to gonzaga by 40 and a bad Florida team by 25 and Baylor beat them by 26. No way to spin lthat loss and any attempt to do so is just putting lipstick on a pig.

Any team that can defend the perimeter is going to give them big problems. At this point, I think making the tournament is about as big of an achievable goal as you can set for this team. Yeah the B1G won the B1G/ACC challenge but we lost all the top matchups so I'm not reading too much into that. I don't think the conf is stacked this year so I do think they should make it but they have no shot at the BiG title or anything beyond that.

 

[Sbee]

TSU's 3 previous games - lost to gonzaga by 40 and a bad Florida team by 25 and Baylor beat them by 26. No way to spin lthat loss and any attempt to do so is just putting lipstick on a pig.

Any team that can defend the perimeter is going to give them big problems. At this point, I think making the tournament is about as big of an achievable goal as you can set for this team. Yeah the B1G won the B1G/ACC challenge but we lost all the top matchups so I'm not reading too much into that. I don't think the conf is stacked this year so I do think they should make it but they have no shot at the BiG title or anything beyond that.

Disagree on many counts

We would have won had Marvin Clark played in the second half, without Dawson and Clark we had no 4 man, we played a walk on and bess who never played the 4. Izzo did not put his best team on the floor, lost the game when he could have given in, played Clark and won.

That game was a perfect storm, we missed open 3's, they did not defend the perimeter well.

We're still 4th in big ten power rankings after TSU.

I'm not worried about the streak.

 

[gotime909]

I'm not really worried about the streak, but there's no way around it....that was a terrible loss and there are no excuses for it.

 

[Spartanmack]

I'm not that worried about the streak either. I'm just saying any expectations beyond that are unreasonable. But I think the risk of not making the tournament is greater than our chances of winning the B1G. As for the TSU game, even w/ Clark and Dawson on the bench we should beat them without much trouble. And TSU did defend the perimeter pretty well. If you watched the game, we frequently needed and used a lot of the shot clock to get an open look. And even if they didn't defend the perimeter very well, it's clear that when we do play teams that defend it well, we're going to struggle.

 

[MSUMatt28]

One thing that's been overlooked about this team is the productivity that Costello is starting to give them inside. The team would do well to explore that further in order to lessen their reliance on the 3. I'm guessing the reason Izzo hasn't considered playing him and Schilling together is that he still can't trust them to not foul and there is nobody behind them.

TSU was a bad loss but the team had been playing pretty well before that consistently winning by comfortable margins and getting up big early on teams and not letting them hang around (which hasn't always been in the case even the past couple of years against lesser foes), including against EMU who had beaten UM not long before that. Again, because they couldn't quite get it done in the games against Kansas and Notre Dame (who by the way was ranked 16 last I checked) this loss seems to sting even more.

They have enough parts to finish 2nd in the Big Ten, but they are going to need to do some work on the road to do that, and that requires a killer instinct and a go-to player in the clutch, which are two things so far they haven't shown they have.

 

[Sbee]

I like what I've seen from Bess in limited action. He's only played in 3 games and is working his way back to shape but he seems to get to the rim and draw fouls, just what this team needs.

One pivotal game is our next one. Maryland has played very well and this may be our toughest home game this year. I'm hoping for some kind of positive update on Dawson soon.