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2 games in the Big East tonight...

St Francis of PA at Marquette, 7pm.
Southeast Missouri State at DePaul, 9pm.

DePaul crushed Chicago State on Saturday. It would be big for the program to get wins vs SE Mo State tonight, and Wyoming in Las Vegas on Thursday. If they can't win tonight then that would be pretty bad. Eli Cain has emerged as their top scorer and go-to guy. Just feed him all game.

Marquette has no bad losses (Michigan, plus winnable games vs Pitt and Wisconsin) and a couple of SEC wins (Vandy, Georgia). They can finish 9-3 in non-conf with wins over the Red Flash and the Cougars of SIU Edwardsville. Should be 2 easy wins.

St. Francis [PA] @ Marquette, FS1 - Brian Anderson, Dickey Simpkins
Line: Marquette -29



SE Missouri State at De Paul, FS1 Jeff Levering (play-by-play) and Stephen Bardo
Line: DePaul -11

The NCAA has roughly 3.5 billion rules and regulations, and not one of them bans dark-colored numbers from appearing on the backs of dark/black uniforms?

Demon22 wrote:The NCAA has roughly 3.5 billion rules and regulations, and not one of them bans dark-colored numbers from appearing on the backs of dark/black uniforms?

SEMO managed to find the one flaw in an otherwise perfect defensive gameplan.

Can't see SEMO hitting 9 threes again in half number 2, but has to be discouraging to be down by 5 after leading by 14 in the 1st half.

Despite DePaul's best efforts, and an 8-0 SEMO run to take the lead with under a minute left in the game, the Blue Demons hang on for a 81-78 victory.

Wow, that minute stretch at the end hurt my eyes and my brain. I'm glad they hung on to win. DePaul needs to ditch the double pass out of bounds play. That confused everyone but the Ref!!

Another GUTSY win! Ray is smiling!

Play of the game was on DePaul's 59th and 60th points... Garrett inbounding under his own basket, with defender's back turned... BG tossed it against the guy and gathered it up for a layup.

The key to the game was Eli Cain getting into foul trouble early... 2 quick fouls, then returned late first and got whistled for an iffy charge. So that meant tons of minutes for Curington and Gage, neither of whom can play defense and are out of position all the time, and combined on D to allow SE Mo State to hit 98 three-pointers. If Cain had stayed on the court longer it would've been a much different game for the better.

Curington and Gage can be sparkplugs on offense and in the press, so they had some value and it's why they were out there.

In my opinion, DePaul's starting lineup needs to include Cain, Cyrus, McCallum, and Garrett. Center is a huge weakness until Cook gets more minutes. Garrett needs rest every 3 minutes so Gage is apparently the backup PG, though i think they should just hand the keys over to Cain when Garrett sits. Not sure if Wood is hurt, but i don't remember seeing him tonight. Gazi is pretty weak. So the two gapings holes at DePaul are (1) center and (2) backup PG.

Just glad they got the win. They've had 3 ridiculously close wins, vs SE Mo State, Drake, and maybe Robert Morris... 1 major screwup vs UIC... other losses weren't disasters, even including Rutgers which is decent under Steve Pikiell.

Not sure how DePaul will rebound in the Big East. They'll need Cain to go insane in order to win.