Quote Originally Posted by mufansince72 View Post
Obviously, I don't see it your way at all! I'm not a stat junkie like you, but I bet you would be hard pressed to find more than a game or two, where our starting backcourt equalled or exceeded the production of the opponent.
A couple things...first, I'm looking at Derrick, not Jake. Many of those games listed would have gone far differently had Jake shown up. If Mayo could produce away from home I think Jake would see a lot less time and we'd have a lot more wins. But basketball is a team game, and one of the fallacies many people fall into is looking at individual matchups in a team game. It doesn't matter if Derrick outdoes Jahii Carson, it matters if Marquette outdoes Arizona State. Do we often have a negative disparity at point guard? Yes. If we have Craft, or Carson, or Thames, or Williams, or any number of the PGs on teams that beat us, we would have a better record. I won't disagree with that.

However we have mismatches in our favor at other positions. Many of those guys don't have a guy with the all around game of a Jamil Wilson. With the offensive prowess in the paint of a Davante Gardner. With the shot-blocking ability of a Chris Otule. So why are we losing all these games? It's not because Derrick isn't stepping up, it's because we aren't able to exploit the mismatches in our favor. That's why I keep harping on the guys that are supposed to be our best players. When Jamil, Todd, and Davante don't get the job done, we aren't going to win. If Derrick plays his best, it helps, but it isn't good enough to win. If those guys play their best, we can compete with anyone in the country. Get some consistency out of them and this is a completely different season.

This is why I am so irritated with Marquette's fanbase this season. It seems a sizable majority has decided that despite facts flying in the face of the argument, Derrick Wilson is the root of all that ails us. That we lose because of Derrick. Yet as I pointed out above, more often than not we lose in spite of Derrick playing well. I've been pounding that drum for months but people are still colored by Derrick's (abysmal) first three games of the season. People aren't paying attention to the reality of our problem, they are paying attention to their perception of our problem, and all those inaccurate perceptions have led to the wrong guy bearing the brunt of the blame.

If we lose, it's Derrick's fault. It doesn't matter if he plays well or poorly, we are told that he is to blame and things would have been better if only Magic Dawson had been given 30 minutes, never mind that no freshman in the Buzz era has played even close to 30 minutes per game. If we win, Derrick should have been better. Never mind that he did the things necessary to win, he's still not good enough. I've seen a lot of players go through Marquette, and never seen someone so scapegoated as Derrick Wilson. A handful of people got it in their minds after Ohio State that Derrick = bad, and they've spewed it out so repeatedly that they have everyone believing it, even when it's obviously not the case. The kid could cure cancer and someone would say that John Dawson would have done it in less time. It's ridiculous.