The Myth of the "Full 40 Minutes"

I don't blog much about my favorite team, the Marquette Golden Eagles. This is probably because the market is pretty much covered on Marquette blogs: there are the hilarious super fans at Anonymous Eagle, the students who are close to the program at Paint Touches, and the in-depth statistics over at Cracked Sidewalks. Between those three and a few others, pretty much everything is covered.

As the season goes along, we are all running out of complaints about this team. Many of us (myself included) groaned over the slow starts, some bad shot selection and the concern about leadership when the team was struggling in December. Darius Johnson-Odom and Jae Crowder have certainly soothed some of those concerns lately. The team is getting better each time out. The leadership issue is definitely no longer a concern, as this team would be nowhere without its seniors. The team may not be perfect, but the flaws are becoming less noticeable. One question we see and hear a lot, though: can they put together a full 40 minutes? My response to that: how often does anyone ever really play a full 40 minutes?

While it would be nice to dominate a team from the opening tip to the final buzzer, that rarely happens in conference play and the NCAA tournament. Every team makes a run. Even if it's only a little 7-0 run to make you sweat a little, every team will make some sort of run.

Marquette may have played its best game of the season against UConn on Saturday, when the Golden Eagles won by 15 at the XL Center. MU was in control from the opening tip, but UConn was able to get within four points before a technical foul swung the momentum back to Marquette. Did MU play a "full 40?" No, but it's hard to complain about that effort overall.

I think playing a "full 40" is a myth like "giving 110 percent." It might not be possible, but it's a nice dream to shoot for so you never get content. I thought about this after the Oral Roberts win over Akron on Saturday. ORU senior Dominique Morrison was asked if the win could have gone any better. He laughed and said, "Yeah, we could have made more shots and they could have made less shots. It can always go better."

He's right. I don't know if ORU could say they played a "full 40," but they played pretty darn well and were very proud of the win.

In the end, having more points after 40 minutes is more important than playing a full 40 minutes. Even if a team does struggle for five minutes, it really doesn't matter if the team dominates the other 35. Sure, shoot for a full 40 next time because you never want to stop improving. We fans should just remember that if our only is complaint is "they didn't play a full 40," then things are going pretty well.