Welcome to The Holy Land of Hoops

Two home games for our Big East compadres.

7pm: San Francisco at St John's. FS1.
8pm: Houston Baptist at DePaul. FS2.

Two more good opportunities for wins.
St John's is playing great ball now and had a close game vs Syracuse Sunday.
DePaul lost a big 2nd half lead vs Chicago State, but scraped together an OT win.

The Dons, from the WCC, have a great history and one of the best nicknames in college sports. USF has averaged 84 points a game, and has averaged 8 three-pointers-made per game. St John's only gives up 64 per game. Should be a high energy and athletic game.

Houston Baptist has only 2 wins vs Div-1 competition, having beaten both Rice and Army by 2 points. They've had some tough opponents, like Michigan and Texas, but have also lost to Texas-Arlington types. They only average 65 pts a game and shoot only 42% from the field. DePaul should be in good shape as long as they keep focused.

Think about how different the mood and outlook would be if Marquette, SJ, and Butler finished their upset bids against top 5 teams.

I think the mood and outlook here is fine. It's just some of the media who have an agenda who've been negative.

Lavinwood wrote:Think about how different the mood and outlook would be if Marquette, SJ, and Butler finished their upset bids against top 5 teams.

I think it's a great point. Especially for Butler(as they would have gotten a shot at Memphis- much better team than LSU)..

Heck just raw numbers- Marquette would have only 3 losses, St John's 2, and Butler 1.

marq wrote:I think the mood and outlook here is fine. It's just some of the media who have an agenda who've been negative.

Not looking any less forward to conference play than I was before the season started. Actually I'm jealous that the ACC has already begun conference play. Can't wait to see a true round robin conference race.

Good luck guys!

2 cupcakes tonight before maybe the most important weekend of the OOC schedule- with all 10 teams in action- with maybe 7 of the 10 games against teams we could lose to. Really only Providence(Maine 1-8), St Johns(Youngstown St 8-5), and Villanova(Rider 4-5) should be safe. The others are all tough- with 4 road games and a neutral site game(would think Marquette will be at a disadvantage compared to New Mexico).
Georgetown @ Kansas
Butler @ Evansville
Xavier @ Alabama
Marquette vs New Mexico
DePaul @ Illinois St
E Washington @ Seton Hall
California @ Creighton

Here at SJ, we have a very strange ability to make USF look like Duke. Even without all their best players who beat us by 20 last year.

While Lavin is playing with the lineup like it's an exhibition, USF is playing to win. Maybe we should try that plan?

As I type this, Phil Greene gets a fast break and turns it over instead of giving someone a good look. Nothing pisses me off more than easy points thrown away.

Well we started trouncing them…we should really be up by at least 30 but with some missed layups and now passive play up by a lot, we are losing ground. This team plays like there's 2 minutes left with a 20 pt lead when really we have 7 minutes left. Still enough time for USF to go on a run and get some lucky 3's. It can be a single digit deficit in a few quick shots. KEEP OUR FOOT ON THE GAS. We got in the paint, blew them out, now we are chucking up bad shots.

Lavinwood...c'mon.

Can't be negative about tonight. They looked good.