"My rule was I wouldn't recruit a kid if he had grass in front of his house.
That's not my world. My world was a cracked sidewalk." —Al McGuire

Friday, December 21, 2007

One for the Record Books:

Next time you're looking for a good MU trivia question, try this on for size:

What is the 10th largest victory margin by a Marquette team?

Answer:
47 pts. 101-54 vs. Wis.-Milwaukee Feb. 9, 1962
47 pts. 74-27 vs. U.S. International Dec. 1, 1984
47 pts. 85-83 vs. Morris Brown Jan. 2, 2002

And now . . .

47 pts. 89-42 vs. Coppin State, Dec 21, 2007

If MU kept records for quickest first basket, James' score about two seconds in set the tone for the game.. As expected, MU put the Eagles of Coppin State away early, running off to a 15-4 lead before the first media time out. A few interesting lineup notes:

--Trend Blackledge started for MU and directed the opening tip.
--Pat Hazel was in for an extended stretch over the last 8 minutes, and showed a couple of nice blocks.
--For the first time in years, MU played a lineup (albeit briefly) featuring 3 bigs: Hazel, Blackledge and Barro
--Despite the absence of the the two best outside shooters, MU had one of its best 3 point shooting games of the year, shooting 9-20 or 45%

Dominic James paced MU wtih 18 points and 8 assists. Jerel McNeal added 18 points of his own, and Lazar Hayward was close behind with 17.


Dwight Burke, after some surprising strong games early in the season, was surprising by his virtual absence tonight, losing not only the starting job but apparently some major minutes to Trend Blackledge. For his part, Blackledge looked much improved over his play from just a few weeks back.

While one might argue that impressive stats are meaningless against marginal competition, one stat stands out as a bright spot that can't be attributed to weak competition--MU shot 24 of 27 (88.9%) from the Free Throw line.

MU improves to 9-1 with Savannah State on 12/29 standing the way of Big East play.

Video highlights from TallTitan:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

not to be nitpicky, but i think you went dyslexic and menat 83-38 instead of 83 against morris brown :)

Gene Frenkle said...

Don't mess with The Finisher...Lazar.

He may be (or is tied) with McNeal as the most valuable cog on this team.

Anonymous said...

After seeing the names of the schools we have beaten handily will someone explain to me why Xavier seems to have a much more impressive non-conference schedule than MARQUETTE? How playing these cupcakes gets us ready for the BE beats me.