Badgers Lose Tough One

Well with the chance of bad weather I decided it wasn't worth the drive to Madison to watching the Madison West vs Milwaukee Vincent game. With staying home I was able to take it a good amount of college basketball though including the big Wisconsin vs Marquette game. I had predicted Marquette to win this one by five to ten points which was right on the head as Marquette won 81-76.

Marquette was able to force Wisconsin into turning the ball over numerous times late in the game, which allowed Marquette to seal the game. Wisconsin was unable to keep Marquette from getting into the lane and finishing or finding an open teammate for the easy layup. Both Dominic James and Jerel McNeal were able to blow by the Wisconsin defenders at will. James led Marquette with 20 points, while McNeal chipped in 14. Big man Dwight Burke was the unsung hero of the game as he collected seven offensive rebounds which allowed Marquette to get second and third opportunities to score. Marquette was unable to hit the three point shot but, that didn't matter in this game because the were able to get so many easy layups off the penetration.

Wisconsins best offense at times was to miss the shot and get the offensive rebound and get the put back layup. Outside of turning the ball over Wisconsins biggest fall out was that Trevon Hughes kept taking three point shots and was not making them. Brian Butch had another strong outting and appears to really be looking to have a huge senior season and live up to some of his high school hype of being an All American. He's now had two pretty big games against Duke and Marquette and really seems to be bring a high level of intensity to every game. The other senior Michael Flowers also had a pretty good game but was limited by foul trouble. Flowers went 6-7 from the floor and scored 14 points. Trevon Hughes did score 16 points but, half of those came from the free throw line.

If I had to guess right now I would put Wisconsin behind Ohio State, Michigan State, Illinois, and Indiana as of right now but once the Big Ten season rolls around anything can happen. Marquette will for sure be in the top three in the Big East. I haven't seen many of the Big East teams play yet but, of the ones that I have seen they have been the most impressive. So I am saying that they have been more impressive then Georgetown, Lousiville, and Syracuse, which are all teams that have been picked to be towards the top of the Big East.

Within the next couple days I will be updating my high school team rankings and player rankings since I saw one more game this past week. The rankings will not be changing very much since I only saw two more teams play. We will also see how my prediction did for the Madison West vs Milwaukee Vincent game which I'm fairly confident in.