I finally got a chance to watch the Marquette game tonight and wondered what some of you thought after watching the first 3 games (counting Walsh)?
My early thoughts...
- Tons of young talent that will be fun to watch and see who ends up with the big minutes once the conference schedule rolls around. It looks like Russell is a lock, even with a bad game against Marquette, but Tate, Bates-Diop, and Cam Williams all show signs that they could be big contributors.
- I'm still not sold on Amir even though he looked good against an undersized, undermanned, Marquette team. Anthony Lee looked better in the first two games, but threw a clunker against Marquette. And McDonald, well he was McDonald, always showing flashes and then reminding you why he is a backup.
- Either Marquette is going to be one of the best zone-busting teams in the country or we got a lot of work to do on this new zone defense. This game might have been different if they had their big guy, as it was they did a lot of penetrates and dumps for ez 2's. Not to mention a bunch of silly fouls.
- It's very early, but I agree with Dan Dakich, Sam Thompson looks vastly improved as a shooter.
- I'm hoping to see more then a bunch of perimeter shooting on offense, Scott was doing his best impersonation of Aaron Craft going to the basket, but even with a big height advantage we rarely went inside to our bigs. It will be interesting to see how we shoot on the road against a tough Louisville team.
- I'm glad Russell had a bad game. I know nothing about his work habits, but hopefully he learned that things at this level won't come as easy as it did at the last. He looks like he, Loving, and hopefully Thompson, will make a great nucleus this year.
- Aside from Louisville and North Carolina I wish we had another couple "test" on the non-conference schedule, but maybe Matta can use this schedule to build some confidence and work out some kinks.
All in all I'm pretty stoked to see where this team can go. There will be some growing pains but I'm pretty sure we won't bog down offensively like last year.
Your thoughts?
