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Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad Losses
It was a rough, rough week for Wisconsin’s top two college basketball programs. What could be worse than Bo Ryan’s Badgers blowing a 9-point lead with a little over two minutes remaining against Michigan State? Michigan State ultimately won the game in overtime. How about Marquette losing an 18-point lead to Louisville with 5:44 remaining? Louisville ultimately turned a 65-47 Marquette lead into a Louisville 71-70 win.
Ugh.
Hopefully the lessons learned from this past week’s debacles (is there a plural form of debacle?) will be helpful to each teams’ future success. Wisconsin late in games must find a way to keep the ball in the hands of Jordan Taylor. Period. I really trust the guy and there really is not another option at the point for more than two minutes a game. What would UW do if Taylor had to sit out for an extended amount of time? I shudder to think.
As for Marquette, they play more close games (and lose more than their share) than any team this side of Mike McCarthy’s squads. I love the competitiveness, and I am driven crazy by the lack of sound decision-making at times. While the team is heavy on guards, they do not have an established point guard to calm things down when the game gets tight. In a year that player will be Junior Cadougan, but for right now Dwight Buycks and Darius Johnson-Odom need to play with more maturity. MU is really close to being really good, but they aren’t really good because they cannot consistently finish tough games.
I expect both teams to make the NCAA Tournament and am moving on after both miserable losses. Now…let’s not have any more games like these this year.
5 Comments
I agree about Taylor but I don’t like the isolation they’ve been running with him at the end of games. Offense gets too stagnant and they often don’t get a good shot with the shot clock running down. Keep waiting for Taylor to turn into Devin Harris or even Trevon Hughes at this point but it’s not happening quickly enough.
UW is a little hard to figure this year…I also don’t like how Leuer can disappear for extended stretches. On the bright side, Jarmusz is playing better!
Jarmusz was a bright spot yesterday but I’m not sure that’s necessarily a good thing for them. Mostly highlights that the rest of them are lacking.
Tim Jarmusz is like the reincarnation of Jason Bohannon. Always great to see them put together great stretches, but those stretches were rare, and fans found themselves yelling at the screen more than cheering on those players’ accomplishments.
That’s a little harsh, B. J-Bo was a little more consistent contributor than Jarmusz.