Deane's baby formula just doesn't wash

0 Comments | Milwaukee Journal, The, Feb 10, 1995 | by MICHAEL BAUMAN

WHEN YOU LISTEN to Mike Deane talk about his team, you sometimes get the feeling that he is not a basketball coach, but the director of a day-care center.

As the season wears on, and the performances remain uneven, the Marquette University basketball team does not seem, in these retellings, to age much. Rather, it seems to grow younger.

If this process continues, you will no longer have an image of the Marquette players needing coaching and practice. You will have an image of the Marquette players needing new bottles of formula and probably fresh diapers.

Over 13,000 fans trucked over to the Bradley Center Thursday night to witness the resurgence of the Golden Eagles, which is based on their courageous and possibly even mature performance against Cincinnati.

What we got instead was a discouraging 55-48 loss to St. Louis. What we also got was another post-game discourse from the coach on just how young and inexperienced this Marquette basketball team actually was.

This stuff played pretty well in December, but it seems a little less usable now in February. This does not stop Deane, however.

Those of you who watched the game probably had a fundamental question: Why couldn't Marquette make more use of its considerable height advantage?

St. Louis doesn't start anybody over 6 feet 6 inches tall. Marquette has Amal McCaskill, at 6-11, in the middle. St. Louis fronts McCaskill, with a man 5 inches smaller. The standard tactic in this case might be to lob the ball over the smaller man's head. So then the St. Louis weak-side defender would come over to help. But frankly, unless that defender grows 5 inches on the way over, he shouldn't be able to stop McCaskill, either.

McCaskill got seven shots Thursday night. That wasn't enough. Why Bauman

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didn't he get more shots? Because, of course, he is young and inexperienced.

Deane said McCaskill's footwork was not yet developed enough to take this lob pass and make it work.

"If we throw it over the top, we struggle to catch that and then finish off of that," Deane said. "He {McCaskill} consistently doesn't get after the ball. His footwork and his balance are things that are still developing. He gets knocked off of balance very easily. That's something that we're working on every single day. We're still working on it. We're still working on it."

McCaskill is old enough to be a college junior and old enough to be 6-11. Hey, he even has facial hair. Yes, his relative lack of basketball experience is a matter of public record. Still, it ought to be noted somewhere that Marquette is paying some middle- aged guys a lot of money to help him gain experience.

But when Marquette doesn't fully utilize this major advantage inside, let's all point our finger at the 21-year-old. It's obviously his fault because he's young and inexperienced.

Marquette was out-rebounded, 14-9, on the offensive boards by this markedly smaller team. "We weren't gritty enough on the backboards," Deane said.

Well, why not?

"Well, I think some inexperience," Deane said.

There's an alternate explanation for why a smaller team out- rebounds a larger team. That would be that the smaller team wants to rebound more than the larger team, that the smaller team, does in fact, come to this particular contest more emotionally and physically ready to play.

Maybe if we draw out this experience argument, the St. Louis dominance in this area will not be a surprise. The St. Louis coach is Charlie Spoonhour. He would be, of course, older and more experienced than Mike Deane.

Contrast Deane's approach with Spoonhour's explanation of why his team had a disappointing 70-54 loss to Alabama- Birmingham last weekend. It was a coaching mistake in game preparation, Spoonhour said: "We were so busy getting some rest that we forgot to get 'em ready to play."

Or contrast Deane's comments with those of Anthony Pieper, who, although he is just 20 years old, played a very sound game for the Golden Eagles. "We're a young team," Pieper said, "but we can't use that for an excuse no more."

Well, some of us can't. But credit Pieper for adopting a mature approach to this defeat.

At the end of the day, sure, Marquette has a young and inexperienced team. But that wasn't the only factor at work in this loss.

Marquette was beaten physically by a smaller team. Some of this might have been about maturity, but much of it was about motivation. That goes to coaching.

Deane obviously did a superb job getting his team ready to play Cincinnati. Just as obvious, he did not have his team ready to make it two consecutive fine outings. The Eagles seemed older against Cincinnati. Thursday night, remarkably, they became younger again. If this trend continues, by tournament time the coach is talking toddlers.