Defensive Table: MU 3rd best defense with Otule, 69th best in next eight games, and now 10th best in last four games

I'm sure I've lost most of your interest by now, but I just had to go back and look at the game-by-game defensive performance to figure out when MU's defensive rating started to improve again. With Chris Otule MU gave up an average of 0.82 points per trip, which even after adjusting for some weak offenses gives them a defensive rating of 0.84 (the points per trip against an average offense). That means that Marquette's defense played as well as the:

- 3rd best defense in the country while Otule was playing,
- the 69th best defense in the country the first 8 games he was out (0.98 per trip, and even after adjusting for tough offenses faced, a 0.94 adjusted rating), and finally,
- the 10th best defense in the country the last 4 games (0.94, but adjusted to 0.87 due to offenses faced).

Four games doesn't a season make, but it appears it took MU a while to figure out the defensive adjustments they'd have to make with Otule no longer having their back, but four straight stellar performances on defense indicates they may have now solved it.

Opponent	Pts Allow	Possess	Raw Def	Adj for Opp
Mount St. Mary's	37	72	0.51	0.59
Norfolk St.	68	84	0.81	0.84
Winthrop	73	71	1.03	1.08
Mississippi	66	80	0.83	0.86
Norfolk St.	57	64	0.89	0.92
Jacksonville	56	68	0.82	0.86
Wisconsin	54	63	0.86	0.77
Ave. with Otule				0.84
Washington	77	72	1.07	0.99
Wisconsin Green Bay	61	77	0.79	0.84
Northern Colorado	72	74	0.97	0.93
Louisiana St.	67	65	1.03	1.03
Wisconsin Milwaukee	50	65	0.77	0.78
Vanderbilt	74	70	1.06	0.97
Villanova	77	73	1.05	0.97
Georgetown	73	66	1.11	0.98
1st 8 games w/o				0.94
Syracuse	73	74	0.99	0.83
St. John's	64	70	0.91	0.91
Pittsburgh	57	59	0.97	0.87
Louisville	63	72	0.88	0.85
Last 4 games				0.87

CORRECTION FROM POST BELOW: Tonight Pomeroy calculated Louisville with 72 trips, rather than the 74 I had last night, so I've made that correction.

Pomeroy now has MU as the 28th best offense and the 27th best defense in the country, making MU one of 11 teams in the Top 30 in both offense and defense along with; Syracuse (4 offense, 10 defense), Michigan State (7, 9), Kansas (8, 3), Kentucky (10,6), Baylor (11, 16), Ohio State (12, 1), UNC (2, 12), Wichita State (21, 17), Gtown (23, 15) and St. Louis (27, 20).