Tag: dpubb

DePaul Hosts Marquette For Senior Night

The DePaul Blue Demons host rival Marquette.  The Golden Eagles currently sit in 5th place in the Big East with a 9-9 record.  As we all know, DePaul is in the cellar with a 2-14 record in conference play.  This game will be a contest of contrasts.  Marquette has an excellent offense that lives by the 3 and dies by the 3, while the Blue Demons have a horrific offense that lives by the 2 and dies by the 3, because the team takes too few and shoots them poorly.

Poor free-throw shooting doomed the Demons in the first meeting in a game that DePaul lead for all but 1:16 of action.

The Setup

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DePaul takes on Marquette Tuesday, March 3rd, at 7PM Central at Wintrust Arena in the South Loop. The game will be on FS1 Channel 237 on Comcast in Chicago and on Radio 670AM.

Tale of the Tape

 

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Marquette has 6 great advantages, while DePaul has 5.  Of course, Marquette is the 11th most lethal 3 point shooting team in the country shooting 38.2% as a team.  That is just crazy.

Winner of the Tape:  Marquette

Who Can Hurt the Demons?

Markus Howard

Howard is the highest usage guy in the country.  37.8% of all possessions end in his hands.  41.0% of all shots come from Howard, which is the highest percentage in the country.  He is currently rated as #3 in the kenpom.com player of the year metric.  He is pretty much a nightmare, so it would be interesting if he did not play.  Who would pick up the shots?

Howard is also a clean point guard not turning the ball over at a high rate.

Sacar Anim

Anim is another deadly 3 point shooter shooting 39% behind the arc.  Strangely, he only shoots 64% from the free-throw line.

Theo John

You do not have to worry about John’s offense, but he blocks 10% of all shots in a typical game.  The Golden Eagles funnel drivers to him and he finishes them off.

Other Dangerous Shooters

Brendan Bailey shoots 39% from 3, while Jamal Cain and Greg Elliott shoot 40% and 39.5% from 3.  All 3 of these guys typically have wide open attempts, which contributes to their deadliness.

What is Going to Happen on Tuesday?

It is Senior night.  It is the last regular season game for DePaul at home.  It will most likely be the last time we see Paul Reed at Wintrust in uniform (if he plays).  That is why it is hard to say how the game will go.  If Reed plays, DePaul has an excellent chance to win.  If Reed’s hip-pointer keeps him out.  Forgetaboutit.

 

 

DePaul Travels to Old Milwaukee

The DePaul Blue Demons travel to Milwaukee to take on rival Marquette.  The Golden Eagles currently sit in 5th place in the Big East with a 5-3 record.  As we all know, DePaul is in the cellar with a 1-7 record in conference play.  This game will be a contest of contrasts.  Marquette has an excellent offense that lives by the 3 and dies by the 3, while the Blue Demons have a horrific offense that lives by the 2 and dies by the 3, because the team takes too few and shoots them poorly.

Marquette swept DePaul last year.  The first game was relatively close, but the Golden Eagles smoked the Demons by 19 in the second.  Markus Howard had 36 points on 4-9 from 3, 8-12 from 2 and 8-10 from the free-throw line.  It was an all around terrible effort by DePaul.

The Setup

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DePaul takes on Marquette Saturday, at 1PM Central Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. The game will be on FoxSports Regional which means UTOO Channel 230 on Comcast in Chicago and on Radio 670AM.

Tale of the Tape

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Marquette has 7 great advantages, while DePaul has 5.  Of course, Marquette is the 6th most lethal 3 point shooting team in the country shooting 39.4% as a team.  That is just crazy.

Winner of the Tape:  Marquette

Who Can Hurt the Demons?

Markus Howard

Word on the street is that Markus Howard is questionable.  Of course, we all know that he will play against DePaul.  Howard is the 2nd highest usage guy in the country.  38.7% of all possessions end in his hands.  42.6% of all shots come from Howard, which is the highest percentage in the country.  He is currently rated as #4 in the kenpom.com player of the year metric.  He is pretty much a nightmare, so it would be interesting if he did not play.  Who would pick up the shots?

Howard is also a clean point guard not turning the ball over at a high rate.

Sacar Anim

Anim is another deadly 3 point shooter shooting 43.7% behind the arc.  Strangely, he only shoots 66% from the free-throw line.

Theo John

You do not have to worry about John’s offense, but he blocks 10% of all shots in a typical game.  The Golden Eagles funnel drivers to him and he finishes them off.

Other Dangerous Shooters

Brendan Bailey shoots 39% from 3, while Jamal Cain and Greg Elliott shoot 40% and 45% from 3.  All 3 of these guys typically have wide open attempts, which contributes to their deadliness.

What is Going to Happen on Saturday?

If Howard is playing, I find it difficult to believe that DePaul could deal with the firepower.  Marquette has had 2 off shooting nights the entire year.  In all Big East games they have shot at least 32% with the exception of their worst 3 point shooting game of the year, a win over Villanova, when they shot 23.8% and still won.  They shoot 44% of their shots from beyond the arc.

If Howard is not playing, I can see a scenario where Marquette is a little out of their flow, with players being in positions that they are not use to.  That could lead to an advantage by the Blue Demons.

 

 

 

Creighton Extends the Streak to Eleven Against DePaul

Poor 3 Point Shooting Dooms the Blue Demons

The three game gauntlet against Villanova, Butler, and Creighton, teams that had beaten DePaul a combined 40 times, is over.  However, two of the long streaks are still alive.  A diminished Blue Demon squad, missing starter Jaylen Butz, and sixth man, Devin Gage, succumbed to Creighton’s 3 point shooting in the second half.

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18.75% from 3 will make a Demon Cry

The Blue Demons took an early lead on Nick Ongenda’s dunk.  It was the only lead of the night for DePaul.  At the ten minute mark of the 1st half, the Bluejays had taken a comfortable 8 point lead on Denzel Mahoney’s 3 point shot.  The Demons stayed within striking distance keeping the deficit under 10 for the remainder of the half, and closed the half being down only 3.

This writer was ecstatic to only be down 4, because the Demons did not look right.

In my preview, I thought that Romeo Weems would draw Creighton sharpshooter, Mitch Ballock, but he ended up on point guard Marcus Zegarowski.  In general, Weems disrupted him and kept him to having an average night with 9 points, 10 assists, and 3 turnovers.

Ballock did turn into an issue as the night went on going 5 for 11 from 3 point land, ending up with 19 points.  It was the supporting cast of Creighton that did the damage.  Five Bluejays scored in double figures.  As a team, the Bluejays shot 40% from deep going 10-25.

If you watch the makes below, Ballock really had only 2 open shots.  The guy is a shot maker.

DePaul made three 3 pointers in the game, all by Jalen Coleman-Lands, who went 3-7 on the game, but that was it.  The rest of the team went 0-9.  As a team, the Demons shot 3-16 or 18.75%, which was a season low.  Simple math explained the whole game in one tweet.

If your opponent averaged 1.2 points per possession on possessions that ended in a 3-point shot, and your team averaged .56 points per possession in which you shot a 3-pointer and your opponent took 9 more 3 point shots?  You are going to lose.  The end.

It didn’t help that when Creighton wasn’t shooting 3’s they made 53.5% of their 2 point shots (1.07PPP), while DePaul made 51% (1.07PPP).

Always remember boys and girls, 3 is greater than 2, and when you have an elite group of shooters who take a ton of 3s, you are going to come out ahead a lot of the time.

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Demons Downed By Johnnies

DePaul 0-3 in Big East Play, Trouble Brewing

In a game that both teams needed, the St. Johns’s Red Storm prevailed in an ugly, forgettable victory.

Not all was bad at first.  Charlie Moore hit a 3 pointer at the 16 minute mark.  We like when Charlie finds his long-distance stroke.  DePaul took at six point lead at 13-7 with 14:31 in the half.  The players were playing loose and confident.  Of course, it rapidly changed after that.  A quick 3, a turnover leading to a layup, and it was a one point game.  From that point on, the Demons were never up by more than 4 points.  The teams exchanged the lead several times for the next few minutes until the Red Storm began to take control of the game taking a lead that they would never relinquish with 6:12 to go in the 1st half.  DePaul went over 3 minutes without a point, during which the Jonnies went on a 10-0 run getting the lead to 6 points.

With 1:24 left in the half, Paul Reed finally got on the board to cut the St. John’s lead to 3.  DePaul  played strong defense to get the ball back with the chance to tie and 1:09 left in the half.  Then badness occurred.  Moore missed a layup, DePaul played excellent defense again, getting the ball with 32 left.  After running the clock down to less then 10, Devin Gage missed a wild shot which lead to this awful sequence.

So instead of being down 1 or being tied, the Blue Demons found themselves down 5 and extremely hot-headed going into the locker room.

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Demons Downed by Last Second Free-Throw to Friars

To say that the result of the DePaul/Providence game was disappointing would be a severe understatement.  The headline of the game is that the DePaul Blue Demons lost on a last second free-throw by a 38% shooter on a foul that is generally ignored.

The story of the game was that DePaul could not hit from 3 point land, while the Providence Friars uncharacteristically shot fluid.  In the preview of this game, it was pointed out that DePaul was a better shooter of 3 pointers and better at defending them than the Friars.   Providence came into the game shooting 32% from the outside, while the Demons came into game shooting nearly 34%.  However, during the game, the Friars made 40% of their 3 point shots going 10-25, while DePaul shot only 23.8% on 5-21 shooting from beyond the arch.

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Why?  Why can’t we close out games?

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Blue Demons Host Northwestern Seeking Revenge

I don’t know where you were December 8th, 2018.  I know that my poor son and I were in Evanston, Illinois to watch the Blue Demons visit Northwestern.  You know, great bonding moments between father and son.  Nice seats, easy drive from the Northwest ‘burbs, why wouldn’t I go?

DePaul came out beautifully, taking a  41-29 lead into half-time.  Now, I have been to too many games where things have been flowing excellent, and then the Demons have gotten their teeth kicked in, so I always have my guard up, and never get too high.

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DePaul Survives Berserker Vikings

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Evidently, it truly is Believeland.  The Cleveland State Vikings gave the DePaul Blue Demons quite a scare, ultimately losing 73-65.  It was a bizarre game.  DePaul turned the ball over 26 times, shot less than 50% from the field and 21% from the 3-point line, but…….DePaul made free-throws, 26 of them!

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Fortunately, Cleveland State turned the ball over more than normal to the tune of 29 times.  Normally, the Vikes turn the ball over at an incredible rate of 25% of possessions, while today they turned the ball over 36% of the time.  So that’s good??

The State of Cleveland shot better than normal from 2 point land (44% normally 48.8% today) and 3 point land (23.6% normally 33.3% today), but thankfully, they shot like crap from the free-throw line 56.5% when they normally shoot 67.2%.

If you tuned in early, the game went exactly as expected, with the Demons going on a quick 9-0 run after 5 minutes.  I was already having dreams of being up forty and getting a little excited about seeing some extended time from our non-starters.  I was talking trash to my son, my dog was begging to be petted, so I was indulging her.  Everything was going great.

Although there were a plethora of turnovers, the lead kept expanding, reaching a high point of 16 with just under 1:30 left in the half.

From then on, it was a slow march to the end.  It was mildly stressful with never the thought of the Demons actually losing.

So what was the problem?  The damn diamond beserker press.  It has becoming abundantly clear, that our guards do not like pressure.   Buffalo and now Cleveland St. asked us to increase our tempo and we obliged them with a deluge of turnovers.  Even when we did break the unholy press, our big men, would make a bad pass, lose the ball, miss a layup, or charged into our old friend Big Al Eichelberger.

Jaylen Butz, Paul Reed, Romeo Weems, Charlie Moore, and Devin Gage all had 4 turnovers.  Only Jalen Coleman-Lands had more assists than turnovers.  It was an awful game to watch.  It hurt my feelings.  Best summed up by the following tweet which was inspired by a tweet by @HSS1DPU:

Alright, let’s get to the nitty-gritty.

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Demons Succumb to the Trap Game

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The LazyBlueDemon after the game.

After a euphoric week of fun after beating Texas Tech, with the hashtag #RankDePaul trending, and the BigEastBias.com writing 7 or 8 articles about the AP voters being cowards for not ranking the Demons, DePaul came out flat, missed Eleven free-throws, turned the ball over fifteen times in the first half, and ultimately lost to the Buffalo Bulls by 5.

The first 18 minutes of the game were brutal for both teams.  DePaul couldn’t get out of their own way and invented new ways to turn the ball over.  The Bulls could not make a shot.  For most of the half, Buffalo was shooting in the low 30 percents and less than 20% on 3-point shots.  However, the Bulls began to get easy buckets off of the increasingly careless turnovers.

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It’s Over: DePaul Knocked Out of Big East Tournament by Marquette

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Down One with 11 seconds left, the Season Rested in Max Strus’s Hands

On a complete defensive mishap by Marquette, Eli Cain found Max Strus wide open for a potential game winning 3-point shot with 5 seconds left in the game.  Strus took the shot, and left it short, and DePaul lost, yet again, by less than 5 points for the 8th time on the season.

I have watched this play an unhealthy amount of times, but hey, let’s relive it again.

Marquette’s Andrew Rowsey completely messed up this pick and pop.  Rowsey should be sending Strus a wheel of Wisconsin cheese for the following:

  1. Missing the shot
  2. Not driving to the basket
  3. Not passing to a wide open Brandon Cyrus
  4. For standing around admiring his missed shot instead of running towards the basket in case he missed.

 

 

And with that, DePaul’s season came to a crashing halt.

As I said on twitter, “Was this a microcosm of the season or what?  Wouldn’t want it any other way than to go down losing the way we have 8 other times this year.”

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