In the inaugural episode of the Marquette: Revealed series, Coach Buzz used a bottle of purple Gatorade to make an elaborate, bizarre metaphor about a team's character being revealed when it is challenged. I don't remember exactly what Coach Buzz said, but it was something along the lines of: when the bottle of purple Gatorade gets tipped over, purple Gatorade is going to come out -- unless the bottle is full of sand or stones or other stuff that's going to keep the Gatorade inside. I believe the point was that you don't want the Gatorade to come out. You want your team to be made up of strong stuff, bound together tightly so that when the going gets tough, you don't end up all wet. I think.
Today, if we want to stick with Coach Buzz's metaphor, the bottle not only got tipped over, it got kicked across the room, stomped on, and then lit on fire, and, sure enough, when all was said and done, there was nary a drop of purple Gatorade to be found. In the 71-70 loss to the Louisville Cardinals, Marquette's character got revealed in a big way: from coach on down, this team is a fraud.
There's really no more to say after you blow an 18-point lead in just five minutes; I'm not going to recap the game, because (1) you already know what happened and (2) if you don't, you don't want to know. Maybe there are better days ahead (which I doubt), maybe there aren't (much more likely, considering how soft this team proved itself to be today), but regardless of the way this thing plays out over the next couple of months, this crew has written its epitaph: this was the team that couldn't protect an 18-point lead for five minutes.
That's all the words I've got today.