danzig6767

I hate and envy you It truly sucks for me to live in Wisconsin since i despise both fall and winter. I'd seriously be willing to consider letting someone cut off say my pinkie finger with a pair of garden shears if i could live in a place like San Diego if my daughter, family, and friends were there also.

Not really. Under Crean Marquette chronically would foul more than they got fouled, but this year under Buzz MU has actually made more free throws than opposing teams have even attempted. Their problem IMO is they play a very pressure in your face style of defense that's effective when it's creating turnovers which then MU can quickly turn into easy baskets via transition offense. To often though someone gets beat off the dribble and then guys have to help which ends up leaving open shooters behind the arc or alone in the paint. Plus, because they are undersized, they double team a lot when the ball gets inside and Otule isn't on the court because he's their only guy 6'10 or bigger that's part of the playing rotation. When any defense doubles or traps a lot whether in college or pro ball, if the rest of the defenders aren't perfectly in sync with their rotations, there will be open shooters and that's been a problem in to many of there losses. Besides that, when your defense is scrambling a lot to help because someone got beat off the dribble or on a double team, it tends to take guys out of ideal defensive rebounding position and Marquette is already undersized when trying to rebound.

That's you saying this, not anyone here. There can surely be a middle ground between Marquette going largely all athlete and Wisconsin going mostly farm boys with a random top notch athlete sprinkled in here and there. Have DJO type of player on this current Badgers team and they might actually be a threat to advance a few rounds in the NCAA Tournament instead of hoping for a Sweet 16 finish at best. Bo Ryan has obviously done a great job at Wisconsin. He has lead the program to more NCAA Tournament bids under his tenure than the rest of UW coaches before him combined i believe. I'm not wanting him to be canned. I just wish he could add a little more athletic ability to his teams so that come tournament time, they don't have to score 100 percent of their points in half court sets. This leaves them prone to getting bounced by any team in the big dance if their jumper isn't falling because they rarely ever get any points from transition offense. None. You get in the NCAA Tournament and most teams there play good half court defense and are highly motivated to play very hard on defense. Thus, if your team never runs in transition offense which can lead to some easy points, you are forced each game in the tournament to execute great in half court offense and the jumper gods need to be on your side because there will be little margin for error left to score enough points to keep advancing. You are right. I probably put words in people's mouth. One thing people needs to realize about recruiting is not all schools are created equal. Not to get in a big argument over what schools is better but I have read numerous times that certain players such as a Maymon or Rodney Williams from Minnesota were initially recruited by Wisconsin but they did not have the grades for Wisconsin. These players ended up playing at high level schools but they could not have qualified. Now it is not like Wisconsin is Northwestern but you do lose out on some recruits when your university has higher academic standards. Again schools like Minnesota and Marquette are good schools but they have looser restrictions on qualifying. It's true that Wisconsin has tougher academic standards that some other schools, but i really don't think that's the main reason for why many of his teams have tended to lack the athletic ability of other good programs. I think the main reasons for it is more a mix that many really athletic and higher recruited wings simply don't want to play in the system that Bo runs and he's content with that. Ryan has confidence that he can take lesser athletes as a whole, especially at the wing spots and still win because Bo will get the most out of the kids he eventually signs. There is truth in that also when you consider all of the success he's had. Bo does win a ton of games and generally gets the most out of kids he signs, even kids that were mainly recruited by mid-majors or lesser major programs. I suspect that he'll continue to find ways to win each year even though i have fears about where the scoring will come from next year. He just wins and until he actually misses the big dance some year, i'll just assume that he'll keep getting a bid. That said, come NCAA Tournament time, i also will assume that their ceiling will continue being the Sweet 16 regardless of what seed they end up getting. Not enough athletic ability, not enough players with the ability to create a shot on their own if a good defense contains either Leuer/Taylor, and never getting any easy baskets via transition offense for the Badgers to keep advancing to where Bo finally could reach a Final Four which i really hope some day he gets to experience. Bo's very disciplined system and his fabulous coaching which gets his players to actually execute how he wants allows for his teams to consistently beat the teams who aren't as good as UW along with roughly splitting with the upper tier teams in the Big Ten each year. That and his insane record at the Kohl Center is why he wins 20 plus games a season without random bad years. Come tourney time though where UW will face a good team each time, those teams will also tend to be disciplined/well coached which lessens that advantage Bo has during the regular season and often those other teams will be both disciplined and athletic. This can expose the lack of multiple guys on Ryan's teams who can create shots on their own and defensively, Bo's team defense can get picked apart easier by high quality teams that have multiple weapons. Like i said before, i think Bo is a fabulous teacher of basketball and few coaches in college ball are able get near the max production from the roster of talent on hand as Ryan does. The list is short of coaches who have made the NCAA Tournament 10 straight years, much less at a school like Wisconsin who had so little tradition of basketball success. I just think if he recruited a little better and got at least a little more athletic, especially at the wing positions, he'd have had more success in the postseason. It's simply tough to win 4-5-6 straight games in the big dance for any team/head coach, but it's much tougher when from a pure talent perspective, many of those games your team is only even or at a disadvantage so that you have to keep out-executing the opponent to win. Eventually Bo's teams have a night where the jumpers aren't falling at a good clip and there aren't enough other options for points because they never get easy hoops in transition and the team lacks multiple creative scorers.

I like Buzz and think he'll have a lot of success at Marquette if he stays for a long time. This year's team has surprised me at how well they've developed offensively and if DJO wasn't so cold from the perimeter early in the season, they may have beat Duke or Gonzaga. That said, my one issue with Buzz this year is i wish he'd play a little less aggressive style of defense. I understand that the team is super athletic and undersized, so Buzz wants to play a pressure type of defense to try and create turnovers which then will lead to transition offense for his quick team. My issue though is they play such tight on ball/man pressure that to often they get beat off the dribble and this leads to their defense falling apart into scramble situations where an opposing player gets either left wide open in the paint or behind the three point line. The scrambling around also leaves a defense more prone to allowing offensive boards. I wonder if the defense would be more productive if sometimes they lessened the ball pressure a bit, kinda like how Wisconsin plays defense. Keep guys in front of you, protect the paint, and make them generally have to score over the top. Then at various points in the game step up the on ball pressure and maybe press some, mix things up. This years team is pretty inexperienced and i just think they struggle with the complexity of playing such on ball pressure because when a defender gets beat off the dribble, the whole team needs to react properly when helping or someone will be left wide open.

They've always had at least 1-2 explosive/athletic players on the team. Yes, Jarmusz isn't that good. I'm sure he would be out of the game if there was a suitable replacement. Wisconsin players show some of the best progression year-to-year of any college basketball team in the nation. The reason we are puzzled with Evans and Wilson is because we are so used to seeing constant improvement. Every year I see comments like: "The Badgers are going to be in trouble next year because of recruiting...". It never is the case. Gasser and Berggren will play more important roles next year. Ryan Evans still has time. It would be nice if Wisconsin could advance farther in the tournament. But Marquette has the same problem--the class with Matthews and James never made the Sweet-16. The Marquette comparisons really bother me anyway because the Badgers continue to beat Marquette. This year's Badgers are #1 in the nation in fewest turnovers and #1 in free throw percentage. They play great defense--even better than usual. They haven't really gotten blown out at all this year, which has happened in the past with Bo Ryan teams. The main problem is that the Bo Ryan style does not translate well in road games/neutral court games. It works amazingly well at home because opposing teams in college basketball tend to rush play and throw up quick shots, which is exactly what Bo wants them to do. Great post. People here keep complaining about Wisconsin's lack of athleticism, but look what happens when all you do is recruit athletes like Marquette. They are the poster child for going out and getting guys who can wow you on film. Buzz gets solid athletes every year. Not the best ones because they go to Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, or North Carolina but good one's nonetheless. So here is how they have done recently. Since the Final 4 run Marquette missed the tourney 2 years, lost in the 1st round 3 years, and lost in the second round 2 years. They also are going to struggle to even make the tournament this year. In the same time period the unathletic Badgers have made the tourney every year. The lost in the first round 1 time, the second round 4 times, the sweet Sixteen 1 times and the Elite Eight 1 time. Yet, there are people on this board that would rather do what Marquette does. There is definitely truth to the fact that not everybody is going to want to come to a team focused team like Wisconsin. The guy who wants to jump to the NBA in a year (think Vander Blue here as he made comments about going pro already in the fall) is not going to Wisconsin because they are not going to put up crazy numbers and get to shoot as much as say a Kemba Walker does at Georgetown. But they just need to look at how almost every Badger improves mightily while they are at Wisconsin -- Rob Wilson not included, and how athletic guys like Alando Tucker and Devin Harris thrived in Bo's system. That's you saying this, not anyone here. There can surely be a middle ground between Marquette going largely all athlete and Wisconsin going mostly farm boys with a random top notch athlete sprinkled in here and there. Have DJO type of player on this current Badgers team and they might actually be a threat to advance a few rounds in the NCAA Tournament instead of hoping for a Sweet 16 finish at best. Bo Ryan has obviously done a great job at Wisconsin. He has lead the program to more NCAA Tournament bids under his tenure than the rest of UW coaches before him combined i believe. I'm not wanting him to be canned. I just wish he could add a little more athletic ability to his teams so that come tournament time, they don't have to score 100 percent of their points in half court sets. This leaves them prone to getting bounced by any team in the big dance if their jumper isn't falling because they rarely ever get any points from transition offense. None. You get in the NCAA Tournament and most teams there play good half court defense and are highly motivated to play very hard on defense. Thus, if your team never runs in transition offense which can lead to some easy points, you are forced each game in the tournament to execute great in half court offense and the jumper gods need to be on your side because there will be little margin for error left to score enough points to keep advancing.

Rob Wilson not progressing is a poor reflection not only on the player, but the coaching staff as well. I certainly don't claim to know the details of why Vander Blue decommitted & went to Marquette, but it definitely could be due to the offensive style run at each program. Wesley Matthews didn't want to play for Bo, either (again, I don't know the ins & outs of why). I think it's kind of telling when we have to point to one guy, or a couple of guys & say that they're supposed to be the athletic ones. That's kind of my point, I'd much rather see Ryan & his staff out recruiting roster-wide athleticism where the Jarmuszes & Brusewitzes are the exceptions & not the rule. But imo the truth of the matter is that it's rare to find the thoroughbreds that want to run in a slowdown style of play & offense. If you look at the Badgers' roster right now, there are the two obvious stars, and then a bunch of guys that really don't have good all-around game. There are guys that are defensive specialists, guys that are just kind of tall/big, guys that are real athletic. I know that not many programs are able to fill out entire rosters with good players, but I don't think the swing offense is conducive to enticing the top athletes in the country or even region to play for Bucky. As long as that's the case, I think Ryan & the Badgers will be stuck at good-but-not-great. I don't follow Badger basketball recruiting close, but i do wonder how much the lack of athletic ability on the roster is by choice for Bo in the type of players he prefers for his system or simply more a matter that that the better athletes who also could fit what Ryan wants on the court just generally don't want to play for Bo because of the style of play? Do Bo and his staff even try to recruit a kid like say DJO on Marquette who is an explosive/athletic guard that can also shoot from the perimeter? If not, would the reason why be that that Bo doesn't feel a DJO type of player would fit his system or more the reason being that Bo/his staff feels it would be a waste of recruiting time because that type of player would likely just not be interested in Bo's slower style of play? EDIT-- As for why Blue decommitted, i think style of play was one factor. Other things i read on it though was that Vander wasn't happy with rumors/things being said about him on Badgers forums regarding his academics and he supposedly found himself bonding better with players on Marquette as he got to know the guys on the team.

I feel a bit bad for Cardinal fans if the team ends up losing Pujols, the fans there really do support their team and the very unequal revenue streams for teams not in the financial elite could play a role in those fans having to see a franchise icon leave. That said, the Cardinals over the next 7-10 years and longer will likely be one of the main teams the Brewers will have to try and get past in the NL Central to win the division. So if Albert ends up resigning there, i hope he bleeds St. Louis for every possible last dollar so that it hurts the Cardinals ability to add or keep other good players. If on the flip side the Cardinals balk at Puljols demands and he chooses to go elsewhere, him leaving would also be good for the Brewers not having to face him for the next seven years or longer, so long as he didn't sign with Chicago. BTW, i've asked and wondered this before with other elite free agents, if Pujols really does badly want to stay in St. Louis, why not just give a socalled "hometown discount" to stay? Say he took around 220 million in a contract St. Louis could stomach, but is less than he might get elsewhere. That 220 million on top of the 110 million he's already made, that's 330 friggin million dollars. Would his lifestyle really be impacted any differently by not having another 30-40-50 million dollars?

Players want guaranteed cash is why. That way if they get hurt, they still get paid.

I picked Toronto many years ago to be my NHL team to cheer for, but it was for fairly flimsy reasons. 1. I lost 100 bucks on them from a bet with my buddy during a Finals series vs LA in the 90's, but it made me cheer hard for them. I also became a big fan then of some of those players like goalie Felix Potvin and designated goon Tie Domi even though he was only 5'10. After Potvin left, former Badgers great goalie Curtis Joseph took over which kept me a Toronto fan. 2. I love their uniforms 3. Long time Leafs great Mats Sundin was my key goal scorer on a Play Station hockey game that i'd play against with a good buddy who was a Blackhawks fan. We'd play this hockey game for 10-20 dollars a game usually and thus they'd be intense games after nights of partying.

Bo Ryan obviously knows tons more about coaching a college basketball team than i'll ever know, but his love of Tim Jarmusz is something i've tried figuring out and just can't do it. I understand that Jarmusz doesn't turn the ball over, hustles on defense, and buys in entirely to a team first mentality. That said, he's so useless offensively when his jumper isn't falling and defensively he does try hard, but he lacks the athletic ability to defend really skilled small forwards or shooting guards. Bo has had and counted on other somewhat offensively limited guys like say Flowers and Krabbenhoft, but those guys were much better individual defenders than Jarmusz, Flowers especially was an elite defender. Even offensively those two could contribute more than Jarmusz in there own ways and Krabbenhoft was a really good rebounder for his size. Jarmusz on the other hand seems to me to be a master of no trades except trying hard and rarely turning the ball over, but it'd hard for him to turn it over anyways given that he never does anything with the ball except pass it right away after getting the ball or taking a few wide open three pointers each game.

Yea, it's still kinda hard to believe that this will be our rotation this year, especially considering Prince is still on the team. It's given me real reason to be super excited for the season to start because without Geinke and Marcum, it would have been hard to realistically believe that the rotation was good enough to compete for a playoff berth.

On another forum i read, someone started a what i thought was a great thread idea. If you could add one person to your favorite team (disregard salary and how we would acquire him) who would it be? I posted this on the Lambeau Leap site for just the Packers team, but i thought i'd post it here also and expand it to all three local teams. Brewers-- Felix Hernandez. A rotation of Hernandez/Greinke/Gallardo/Marcum/Wolf would be sick and young in the top three guys. Troy Tulowitzski would be tempting given the makeup of our team and he's still pretty young. Packers-- I'd take Joe Thomas even though Ndamukong Suh is the best young player i've seen in awhile. Main reason i'd take Thomas is that nothing is more important to the Packers franchise than the health of Aaron Rodgers and he's suffered multiple concussions already. Bucks-- LeBron is the best player and should be the obvious choice when you look at how the Cavs have collapsed without him, but i just can't stand the guy so i'll take Blake Griffin.

Yea they've had a lot of good pitching for awhile, but it's not like they've generally had unproductive offenses being carried just by pitching. In 2007 they were 4th in the AL in runs scored and in 2009 they were 2nd in runs scored. They've also had a couple of middle of the pack years and two below average years during their run of success. I'm to lazy to look up all their years of team defense during all their success, but off the top of my head, their organization seems to have put a higher priority on defense than other teams have, even if it came at the expense of some offensive production. They never went say a Brewers type of route of accumulating lots of productive hitters, but many of whom struggled quite a bit to be even just average defensively, much less be plus defenders. I certainly would hate this Wells trade if i was an Angels fan, but overall i'd loved to have been a fan of that team from 2004-2009 regardless if some weren't a fan of their style of play. The style of play i'm the biggest fan of is winning and the Angels did tons of that, winning 90 plus games every year from 2004-2009 except for 2006 when they fell one game short and won 89 games.

If true, that would be amazing. They don't want to pay Beltre, but would willingly take on Wells and the 20 plus million per he makes. I'd want at least 30 million coming back if i was the Angels.

You'd honestly consider batting Gomez in the leadoff spot even though he yearly carries a sub-.300 OBP?

I am not a big Marquette fan. In fact, a buddy and I have a friendly debate about the teams all the time and will send texts back and forth after wins and losses. But I could even bring myself to text him after that Marquette game. Too mean to do to a friend.The frustrating thing for me is this Marquette team is really coming together, especially on the offensive end. They are very tough to defend now that DJO has his sweet three point jumper back and Crowder is more acclimated to the major college game. Unfortunately though between the collapse vs Louisville and a few close game losses against Duke, Wisconsin, and Gonzaga during the early non-conference portion of their schedule could end up leaving MU out of the NCAA Tournament. Against Duke DJO/Crowder were only 2-10 from three and the team overall only 4-20 from three. DJO was only 2-7 vs Gonzaga and 6-21 overall in a close loss. DJO didn't make any threes vs Wisconsin. The perimeter shooting by DJO is so key in making Marquette's offense go from pretty good to really good, especially now that Crowder has also found his groove. Those early perimeter shooting woes though early in the season along with the Louisville debacle has a good chance of leaving MU out of the NCAA Tournament. That would be a bummer because i have a feeling that by the end of the season, Marquette will be playing well and would also be a dangerous team to face in the tournament.

No kidding. Witrado was terrible, but he's simply just a beat writer, not a player that can actually impact games. Plus, IMO at least, Haudricourt does a good job overall as the main guy covering the team and there are other places to get Brewers info like from Adam McCalvy who does a good job.

I hope the first part of your comment is what plays out. However, things like this -- "So, we're willing to go and extend, but there's a limit to the level we're willing to extend. We'll have to work our way through that if we can. We still have time, but if there's a belief on Genske's side that Rickie Weeks is similar to Dan Uggla, then we're going to have a problem." make me worry that a lesser version of The Paul Molitor Free Agent Experience is on the way. If I'm Rickie, the problem is the Brewers acting like I have no leverage, and that I'm not already a better all-around player than Uggla. If they want to wait me out, that's fine. I'll go have another great season & get at least Uggla money in FA. I just don't think the injury risk with Weeks is more significant than it is with any other player at this point. I understand the injury element to this discussion, but imo the Brewers are severely overplaying that hand, and are at serious risk of burning bridges with Rickie on an extension. I hope I'm wrong & overreacting. From the Brewers side of this though, Weeks injury history is a fact and extensive. Not only has Weeks missed a ton of games via injury, Uggla hasn't had a single season with a sub-.800 OPS. Uggla has missed only 30 games over five seasons combined, while except for last year, Weeks has missed over 30 games in every single season, sometimes double the 30 games total. Rickie obviously had a fabulous season last year and has been at least average or better in previous seasons, but he clearly hasn't been as consistently healthy or productive in his career as Uggla has outside of last season. So i can understand why the Brewers would say to Rickie, we think you're a fine player, but given everything involved, Uggla deserves to have a bigger contract. What we don't know as fans though is, to what degree is Melvin trying to get Weeks signed at a price lower than Uggla? Is their offer say 5yr/44 million? 5yr/50 million? Less than both of those? When it's said the differences in demands between a player/team is significant or substantial, that can mean different things depending on the situation. Because of that, we don't know if the Brewers are really are trying to get Weeks at an unrealistic bargain or if the offer is reasonably close enough to the Uggla contract to seem fair from the Brewers perspective when the more consistent health and production of Uggla is factored in?

Prince very well could have told Boras to get this settled at a fair amount so there were no hard feelings and he could just focus on having a big season.

If you replace onion with bacon I would agree. Absolute blaspheme In fact, i think i'll cook me up some wonderful bacon in your honor http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

Yea, those were some painful losses. Thankfully i only had to sit through the UW/MSU debacle. I had to DVR the Marquette collapse and just as i was about to start watching it my buddy called and i quick said to him, don't say anything about the Marquette game. All he then said was, don't watch that game, it will make you sick to your stomach. When he told me why, i simply deleted the game without watching any of it.

I know very little about computers, so when i look at my results compared to many others on here, i noticed that my upload speed is very low in ratio compared to download speed. Would anyone here have any possible explanations as to why? Is this something i should be trying to get improved? http://www.speedtest.net/result/1112190524.png

I understand that and said so, plus he just might be the best relief pitcher in all of baseball. It's just so much cash for any relief pitcher, but i guess for the Yankees money simply doesn't mean the same thing as it does for most other teams, thus they can spend 27 million a year on two relief pitchers without it crimping their budget at all.

Wow, 11 million per for a setup man Granted, the Yankees have money to light on fire and the 8th inning can be just as important as the 9th where closers get paid extra, but that's still an insane amount of cash for a relief pitcher. The obvious problem though for the Yankees is their rotation being so shaky that they may not provide enough leads for Soriano and then Rivera to protect. Speaking of setup guys, i went to yahoo and looked up the league leaders in holds last year, guys who pitch the same 7th/8th innings that Soriano will now pitch. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/stats/bycategory?cat=Pitching&conference=MLB&year=season_2010&qualified=1&sort=133 I'm to lazy to look it up, but i'm guessing that the vast majority of the top 10-15 of these guys made less than 2-2.5 million last year and some under a million. EDIT-- Why the hell would the Yankees guarantee 35 million to a relief pitcher, but give Soriano player options to opt out, but no team options to buy out years if he got hurt?

I can barely stand to watch this team anymore. There is just nothing exciting to watch as the offense is primarly pass the ball around the perimeter and jack up threes. It would be one thing if they had a bunch of sharpshooters but they don't. I have been pretty turned off by the last few recruiting classes and think this team is setting up for big step backwards when Leuer and Nankivil are gone next year. The team is going to be nothing but a bunch of role players and gritty guys who will dive for a ball butcan't handle a press, can't create their shots, and really have a tough time scoring. Even now you hear people complain that WI doesn't get to the foul line like they used to and they don't know why. I think it is because WI has no aggresiveness on offense and teams are content to let them fritter aound for 30 seconds and jack it up. It isn't like Evans, Bruiser, Jarmusz, Gasser, Valyentyn, are going to put the ball on the floor and drive past anyone. Taylor should be able too with his strength but he rarely tries it and if Wilson tries it and fails he ends up on the bench. If the team is hot they can beat some decent teams because they play defense and just the sheer number of three's can win a game if they make a lot. The reality is they really aren't that good of a shooting team and in the end they are going to lose games when they have 10 minute droughts which are all too common. Wisconsin this year is ranked 345th, dead last in all of college basketball in AdjTempo http://www.kenpom.com/stats.php?s=RankAdjTempo Besides what you said, Wisconsin gets almost zero easy baskets out of transition offense, thus they have to score nearly all their points via half court offense in every game. That's hard to do when facing very good defensive teams, on the road, and/or on nights where the jumpers simply aren't falling.