Buzz's Team Identity

[silverback]

Kevin O'Neill's teams were strong defensively, sluggish offensively. Mike Deane's teams were tough, but under-talented once O'Neill's players moved along. Tom Crean's teams were defensively strong and offensively predictable, while focusing on strong rebounding...

And Buzz's teams are aggressive, run and gun units that attack the hoop. But they approach defense and rebounding as an afterthought. It was that way briefly at New Orleans, and it's that way now. We saw it against Washington last year in the tournament and repeatedly this year. Teams are never uncomfortable playing against Buzz's defense as we now do very little to disrupt opponents on the floor.

We might outscore teams to win, but we don't rough them up en route to that win. So long as defense is a secondary concern for Buzz, MU will never be a consistent, major player in the Big East.

[GGGG]

What worries me the most is that someone like JFB, who is in his third year under Buzz, is not a great defender.  A couple years ago, if you would have told me that we'd score 81 points at Pitt, I would have thought "blow out win."  Now?  Notsomuch...

[Tugg Speedman]

A couple years ago, if you would have told me that we'd score 81 points at Pitt, I would have thought "blow out win."  Now?  Notsomuch...

Let me rephrase your statement .... A couple years ago, if you would have told me that we'd score 81 points on the eventual national champs home court that were 47 - 1 before we arrived, I would have thought "blow out win."  Now?  Notsomuch...

I'm not predicting Pitt is going to win it all, but they are that good.  If we "blew out" Pitt yesterday at home, their would have been those here that posted we are capable of making the final four. Those predictions would have been correct.

Can we give Pitt's offense some credit?  They moved the ball and shot incredible well.  As I said in another post, I'm not sure Duke could have beaten them yesterday.

As Sugar wrote in his post the other day, MU is an elite offense.  Maybe better than any offense we have ever seen in the last several years.  They are a so so defense which I attribute to the lack of familiarity with each other.  It's been noted many other places that Jae, VB, DG, Junior and Outle are essentially new to the team this year.  So, even DJO, DB, JFB and JF have to learn to play with them on defense.

I have faith they will learn to play defense and, in fact, I see improvement from a month ago.  Have faith our defense will be much better in late February/March than now.  And, if our offense remains the same, we can be a real force

[chren21]

Can you point out the portions of our defense that have improved?  Nothing is jumping out at me.

[brewcity77]

What worries me the most is that someone like JFB, who is in his third year under Buzz, is not a great defender.  A couple years ago, if you would have told me that we'd score 81 points at Pitt, I would have thought "blow out win."  Now?  Notsomuch...

Well, to be fair, one thing I think a lot of people are overlooking is that this is Jaime Dixon's best offense at Pitt. I don't even think it's really close. In the past we've been in scrappy affairs with them that ended in the 60s or 70s. They're averaging 81.2 ppg this season. This after averaging 72-71-74-77-69 over the past five years. Our defense definitely has holes, I can't argue that, but Pitt also has a very, very good offense, right on par with our own.

However, we will likely have turnover next year. Lose our senior starting point guard that got better consistently as the season went on. Lose our best all-around player in JFB. Lose our glue-guy in Fulce. Couldn't that lead to just as much roster upheaval? Or are we more settled because Blue and Caddy are already getting time for Buycks position, Wilson, Williams, and Jones (potential JFB replacements) will all have experience in the system, and we have a deeper all-around team to offset the loss of Fulce?

[chren21]

Brew, good question that I have been thinking a lot about lately.  Interesting lineup question next year.  I will assume Otule in the main 5 but know that it could be DG if he progresses as we all hope.

DJO
Vander
Crowder
Ewill
Otule

DJO
Vander
JJ
Crowder
Otule

Junior
DJO
Vander
Crowder
Otule

I really like that first lineup.  But who knows.  Based on playing time this year Buzz may not think Ewill is ever going to get real minutes.  I like the idea of DJO and Blue playing point by comittee.  It makes our lineup much bigger and more fit to play tuff in BE play.  The way it is playing out I would bet the last lineup is next years main 5 with DW, JJ, Ewill, JA, and DG comming off the bench.  If by next years BE season he is down to an 8.3 man rotation again, Ewill might be in trouble again.  This doesn't even take into consideration 2 open roster spots that could be filled by more quality Juco's.

The more I think about it... If Buzz pulls an All-American juco 4 man for one of the 2 open spots.  I would bet money Ewill is gone.

[NoCheese]

I echo MU84's thoughts. Duke actually came to mind when I was watching the Pitt game and it seemed to me that Pitt played a tougher game.

What worries me in the short run is how exhausted our kids are going to be for tomorrow night's game against ND. Our kids (DJO in particular) & even Buzz, looked exhausted at the tail end of yesterday's game. ND on the other hand ran over the Redmen/Storm and managed to rest a lot of their talent in the second half. If we don't recover well we could easily find ourselves trying to claw our way into a game at home.

[NoCheese]

JW or JJ over Ewill next year. I've not seen Ewill play a lot of minutes. When I have it looks like he has a nice stroke but he just doesn't look aggressive enough for BE play. I hope I'm wrong.

[Blackhat]

Kevin O'Neill's teams were strong defensively, sluggish offensively. Mike Deane's teams were tough, but under-talented once O'Neill's players moved along. Tom Crean's teams were defensively strong and offensively predictable, while focusing on strong rebounding...

And Buzz's teams are aggressive, run and gun units that attack the hoop. But they approach defense and rebounding as an afterthought. It was that way briefly at New Orleans, and it's that way now. We saw it against Washington last year in the tournament and repeatedly this year. Teams are never uncomfortable playing against Buzz's defense as we now do very little to disrupt opponents on the floor.

We might outscore teams to win, but we don't rough them up en route to that win. So long as defense is a secondary concern for Buzz, MU will never be a consistent, major player in the Big East.

Agree with pretty much everything you wrote.  

It's become apparent Buzz is not that good at teaching defensive fundamentals, which I refuse to believe have to go to the wayside because you want more shot output.

Prediction:  Buzz will either hire a "defensive coordinator" to his staff/change his philosophy on tempo, defensive intensity or be gone in two or three years.

Total lack of help defense.

[Stretchdeltsig]

Marquette's defense against Pitt bothered me a lot too.  Pitt had too many open outside shots; and when they would go underneath, we would not challenge them at all.  Pitt made too many outside and inside shots without being challenged.  Is our lack of defensive efficiency because of our playing or lack of size/strength?  I think our biggest priority is that we need a strong, big man that can prevent easy shots underneath.  We need to be more physical around the basket.   

[GGGG]

Brew, good question that I have been thinking a lot about lately.  Interesting lineup question next year.  I will assume Otule in the main 5 but know that it could be DG if he progresses as we all hope.

You completely forgot about Jamil Wilson I believe.  Jamil will be a three year starter for us.

JW or JJ over Ewill next year. I've not seen Ewill play a lot of minutes. When I have it looks like he has a nice stroke but he just doesn't look aggressive enough for BE play. I hope I'm wrong.

I think JJ is going to be more of a guard type that will fill the hole left when DJO leaves after next year.  What's going to be interesting is what we are going to do to back up the PG position...do we go with the freshman Wilson?  Blue?

[GGGG]

Agree with pretty much everything you wrote.  

It's become apparent Buzz is not that good at teaching defensive fundamentals, which I refuse to believe have to go to the wayside because you want more shot output.

What is strange about this is that all the the yelling he was doing in the MU Basketball Unveiled videos was on the defensive end.  So either those videos aren't an accurate reflection on what is actually going on, he isn't teaching the right stuff, or the players simply aren't picking it up.

[OhioGoldenEagle]

We're arguing over an 8 pt loss to a team that could very well contend for the national title........oh and we played in their gym where they had a 17 game win streak going in and 47-1 in their last 48.  Further, this team has probably been the best and most consistent team the past 10 years, so it's no easy out.  Ridiculous!

Yes, we did give up 89 pts, many of which were open baskets, but when looking at both of our rosters, it's easy to undersand why.  On top of everything I stated above, Pitt starts 3 seniors and 2 juniors...........MU starts a red-shirt sophomore and 4 junior college players that essentially are a D1 junior (Butler), sophomore (DJO, Buycks), and freshman (Crowder).  If I add all of that up Pitt's starters have 13 years of D1 experience, while MU has a grand total of 5 (and that's counting Otule's freshman year where he played like 10 nonconf games).  Check and mate for Pitt.  I'm a big proponenet of upperclassmen leadership leading to success, so I suspect that even lesser programs that have that big of an advantage in experience would be a tough out for MU.......no less a program of Pitt's stature.  (This is also why a think an overall less talented Badger team beat us in Dec.......it was an ugly game on both sides and the more experienced team came out on top). 

All that said, we are still a very young team and will go through defensive lapses frequently as this team grows together.  Fortunately, we are so talented offensively, we can get W's on that alone.  If we start to figure things out defensively, we could be deadly!

[94Warrior]

Most likely scenario:

Blue
DJO
J Wilson
Crowder
Otule

Backed up by:

Cadougan, D Wilson
Jones
Anderson
EWill, JUCO PF
Gardner

+ player to be named later
+ Singleton

[ATWizJr]

Note:  we made Pitt  look like a national championship contender.  They and others will continue to look that way until we tighten up our D and stop giving them open looks.

[Blackhat]

What is strange about this is that all the the yelling he was doing in the MU Basketball Unveiled videos was on the defensive end.  So either those videos aren't an accurate reflection on what is actually going on, he isn't teaching the right stuff, or the players simply aren't picking it up.

I'm not sure it's what you teach but how you teach it. 

Most coaches I've seen in football and basketball who have failed seem to have an idea what needs to be learned and improved on.

They sound like the successful coaches but they were obviously the ones who were ineffective in getting their teaching to generalize to the games.

[NersEllenson]

Prediction:  Buzz will either hire a "defensive coordinator" to his staff/change his philosophy on tempo, defensive intensity or be gone in two or three years.

Total lack of help defense.

The only way Buzz is gone in 2 or 3 years is if he leaves MU to take a "promotion" to an elite level program with a football team as well - such as Texas, Texas A&M, or any other hihg-profile football and basketball school. 

Pretty sure that a lineup in 2-3 years featuring Vander Blue, Jamil Wilson, Davante Gardner, Jamail Jones, Juan Anderson...should produce some pretty solid results.  To imply Buzz would get fired in 2 to 3 years is as moronic and idiotic as those who feel the sky is falling after Pitt put up 89 points on MU yesterday...as has been said..most talented offensive team in Dixon's career, at home where they've won 49 of 50, and shot the ball extremely well. 

[Blackhat]

3 years is a long time ( I believe it's his contract year as well).  

We keep getting worse statistically defensively our record will keep getting worse thus my prediction.

You seem to think Buzz is on a pedestal at MU, he hasn't reached that level yet among alums and most likely not with the AD, especially when the leaders and catalysts of his success to date are not his recruits.

I was probably one of the first fans to want Buzz to be the head man at MU, because I had heard a lot of good things about his recruiting at A&M from friends and then work ethic here.  But the trends aren't looking good as far as defense.

[NersEllenson]

3 years is a long time. 

We keep getting worse statistically defensively our record will keep getting worse thus my prediction.

You seem to think Buzz is on a pedestal at MU, he hasn't reached that level yet among alums and most likely not with the AD, especially when the leaders and catalysts of his success to date are not his recruits.

I was probably one of the first fans to want Buzz to be the head man at MU, because I had heard a lot of good things about his recruiting at A&M from friends and then work ethic here.  But the trends aren't looking good as far as defense.

Let's not jump off a cliff here because we aren't getting better statistically at defense.  We do have an ELITE level offense...which is nothing to sneeze at.  We do have some highly talented kids who are quite young in the fold and waiting in the wings.  I respect your reply here Stone Cold, but I just don't see anyway MU fires Buzz in the next 2-3 years...I think there is a MUCH greater liklihood that another program will try to "steal" him away from MU.  Let's not forget that in all of Buzz's time here..we've probably lost no more than 3 or 4 games by more than 9 points...out of a sample size of roughly 80 games.

I don't think Buzz is on a pedestal at MU...but let's step back from the ledge and look at everything big picture...we weree picked 12th in the Big East last year..nobody had us in the NCAA tourney..we were picked 8th to 11th for the Big East this year..I suspect we will exceed that, and finish somewhere in the 5 or 6 range.  Sometimes it just seems the expectations here are WAY out of control..like we expect our team to be ranked in the Top 10 in all offensive and defensibe categories..which would likely make us Number 1 in the nation from a ranking perspective.  This is YEAR 1 of Buzz having his guys...none of which have been in the program fore than 3 years - whereas Pitt had about 4 or 5 guys that have been in their program for 4 and 5 years already..

[ChicosBailBonds]

The only way Buzz is gone in 2 or 3 years is if he leaves MU to take a "promotion" to an elite level program with a football team as well - such as Texas, Texas A&M, or any other hihg-profile football and basketball school. 

I'm confused.  I thought we were "elite" and we played in the best conference in the country?  Plus he said he would stay as long as Marquette would have him.

Are you sending mixed signals now?

[ecompt]

No way Buzz gets fired in 2-3 years unless the program goes off a cliff. On the other hand, no way Buzz gets offered an elite job unless his teams learn how to stay within 10 feet of its opponents on defense.

[NersEllenson]

I'm confused.  I thought we were "elite" and we played in the best conference in the country?  Plus he said he would stay as long as Marquette would have him.

Are you sending mixed signals now?

Here you go again...but I'll indulge you with an answer:  The point was that it is far more likely Buzz would get recruited out of MU in the next 2 or 3 years than he will get fired.  My response was to Stone Cold who suggested MU would move on in 2 or 3 years if Buzz can't get his teams to play better D.  We are in the best basketball playing conference at present. 

I don't think Buzz will leave for "greener pastures" which would be a school that has a football team.  As you know we at MU are in a precarious position due to not having a football team - with regard to conference realignment and football driving that bus.

I have said previously that the only place I could see Buzz leaving MU for would be Texas or Texas A&M - and what might drive him to do so are fans who have ridiculous expectations/criticisms of how he is handling the program...so keep up your efforts and you might get your wish Chicos!!  Then we can see what sorry sack of a coach we get to come to MU...as we all know who we were turned down by for interviews before Buzz got the job..even though we were in the Big East, had the Al McGuire Center, and had some successs already in the Big East at that point..

[Spaniel with a Short Tail]

Chicos casts his line and Ners bites again. 

[GGGG]

Chicos casts his line and Ners bites again. 

More like throwing a stick of dynamite into a pond.

[Lennys Tap]

I'm confused. 

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