Marquette struggling today against Ohio State. As folks have pointed out previously, M'Q has some weaknesses in backcourt. Craft, that annoying, pesky OS guard has taken them to task today. M'Q is down 20 with five minutes to go. Buzz has sweated through five shirts.
Marquette is 1-16 from 3 pt shooting today.
BTW-If you go back to the Final 8 game last year when they lost to Syracuse 55-39 Marquette has 69 points TOTAL right now COMBINED against the last two ranked teams they have played.
Keep also in mind Marquette is by anyone's standard the pre-season top BE team and currently the only ranked BE team. And that will probably change after today which means the BE won't have any ranked teams.
Keep this in mind in 3 early mathcups, SJU/Wisconsin, Georgetown/Oregon and now OSU/Marquette the new BE is 0-3.
Don't get me wrong I am a big supporter of this new conference. But we have a LONG way to go before it is on the level of the Big 10 or ACC. A LONG way to go.
The new conference is pulling in top level recruits at the same or better level than those conferences you mentioned though. So what gives then? The coaches not up to par?
I would be careful about TOP level recruits. Yes they are pulling in a good number of top 100 but how many are top 50, top 25? Seton Hall had to hire a high school coach to get one.
Meanwhile you saw how the top recruits broke yesterday, Duke and Kansas and Louisville.
It was my argument over the summer about the Big East having all these top 60 teams. Great, but how many are top 10 to top 15. 1 or none meanwhile the Big 10 and the ACC have 4-5 EACH. So the BE may have as many top 60 teams the truth is they don't have any elite programs right now.
Always been the case though. While there have been some basketball only schools that made the Final Four or won championships in the last 30 years its still the vast minority.
Precisely my point from months earlier. The Catholic schools needed to bolt but don't kid yourself into thinking that losing Syracuse, Pitt, Louisville, UCONN, ND and replacing them with Xavier and Butler is an equal swap.
Geez wait til the ACC gets Louisville next year. They will have arguably 4 of the top 10 most prestigious programs in the country. Cuse, Ville, UNC and Duke.
Throw in Pitt and and that is probably 5 of the top 15 jobs in America in 1 conference.
Pitt a top 15 job in america? I'll have to disagree.
Debateable but hard to argue with facitlities and recent success.
Think about this from 2002 thru 2011, 10 straight years Pitt was arguably the best program in the best conference in America. They had more league wins, more league regular season championships, more appearances in the conference championship games and 10 straight NCAA Tourney appearances. No one in the BE could touch that. And a tremendous home court. The Peterson Center is a tremendous on campus facility.
Name me a program in the BE that is a better job then Pitt? Seriously. Maybe Georgetown, maybe.
I look at the best jobs in the country as the best historic programs in the country. It can't just be about the success over the last ten years because if that was the case butler would be a better job than Indiana. Which it's not. And it can't just be because f acilities or the type of salary a school can offer because if that were the case then Oregon would be a better job than duke. Also not true.
To add to your list of fourteen for sure teams, I would add Maryland, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Villanova, Marquette, UCONN, Wisconsin.
Then there is these schools which are much more debatable but I would still lean towards better on.
NC State, Wisconsin, Illinois, Cincinnati, Gonzaga, Memphis.
Not trying to take anything away from Pitt, but top 15 job they are not. Their between the 25-30th best and that's pretty damn good.
Disagee. And if history is the deciding factor then UCONN goes nowhere near the top 15 because before Calhoun got there they were a cow pasture.
10 years is no a small sample and it was a pretty dominant 10 years. You don' have that or what UCONN did from the 90's into the mid 2000's if you are a top 30 program. No way.
You confused me with you final paragraph. The difference With uconn's recent success is that it includes 3 national championships. That's enough for a 100 year period let alone a 15 year one. Again this is my opinion. The difference between a Marquette, Villanova, or Cincy and a Pitt is that those programs have recent success and a great history including NAtional championships, final four appearances, as well as hall of fame coaches and players.
Pitt has been a great BE conference program since 2002/2003. Before then, they were typically one of the worst BE programs in the conference along w BC. Uconn's success in the conference didn't just start 15 years ago. It's really more like 25 years ago. Calhoun took his lumps, but once Nadav Henefield and Tate George signed on, things changed for the better, and they never looked back.
Pitt's facilities and overall basketball presence is largely due to the notoriety of their football program. Without football driving awareness to the University, no one would even know they existed. Ben Howland and then Dixon recruited wisely and built the bball program into a perenial top 25 team. For that, they deserve massive credit.
Still, it doesn't put Pitt in the top 15 for anything. While they have clearly proven to be an excellent BE program, when the tournament starts they lay an egg every year. In the BE, I think GTown and Nova are better jobs. Possibly Marquette as well.
In the ACC alone, you've got Louisville, Duke, NC, Maryland, GT, NC State as obviously better, and then you've got other conferences w jobs like Kansas, UK, UF, UCLA, Arizona, MSU, UM, UW, Ind etc. Pitt isn't at that level.