He beats his defender and drives to the basket, head down. Help defense slides over. He hesitates. Turnover. Repeat.

This occurrence became all too familiar last year for Jerel McNeal, who averaged 3.8 turnovers per game in his otherwise-stellar freshman season.,”

There he goes again.

He beats his defender and drives to the basket, head down. Help defense slides over. He hesitates. Turnover. Repeat.

This occurrence became all too familiar last year for Jerel McNeal, who averaged 3.8 turnovers per game in his otherwise-stellar freshman season.

But neither McNeal nor his coach wants to limit turnovers at the expense of the sophomore guard's most potent attribute: his aggressiveness.

"Everybody's going to talk about my turnovers and how if I limit my turnovers, I'll be an unbelievable player," McNeal said. "A lot of players can do that, but they would do it in a different way by making their games more conservative. I'll always be myself and be an aggressive player because that's what makes me, me."

The turnovers often were mere side effects of the fast-paced, three-guard attack that analysts from around the country are hailing as one of the best in college basketball.

"When you play a quicker game, you're going to have turnovers," head coach Tom Crean said. "I want Jerel to not only handle the ball but handle it even more than he did last year. His recognition of that is the most important aspect" of limiting turnovers. "We'll live with a few turnovers to get what he brings us and hopefully we can just keep building his decision-making process."

Most of the time, though, the sophomore trio of McNeal, Dominic James and Wesley Matthews will force the opposition to hasten its decision-making.

"Playing against us is going to be a problem," McNeal said. "They're going to have to switch something up and change things just by the simple fact that we run the three-guard offense and our speed and athleticism that we bring to the table."

All three contain a quick first step and can get to the basket with ease in half-court sets, but their greatest asset rests in the transition game. With Steve Novak's lights-out perimeter shooting gone, the team's easiest way to score in bunches is through fast-break points. Not many teams in the country can match Marquette's backcourt speed and athleticism.

Those teams can, though, overpower the Golden Eagles in the paint.

"Other teams can see us as match-up problems, too," Matthews said. "We're smaller, we're going to be undersized a lot, but we try to make up for that with our speed and our quickness."

When Marquette faced some of the frontcourt-heavy Big East powers last season, it did so without a healthy backcourt. Matthews was hampered by a stress fracture in his right foot and missed eight games during the beginning of conference play.

"I felt that I was just getting ready to turn the corner," Matthews said about the injury's timing. "But I played through it, and it made me a lot tougher mentally."

Matthews struggled in his first few games back and did not show his pre-injury form until the end of the season. Many Big East teams, therefore, have yet to see Marquette's three sophomore guards in full flight.

And just how fast can this team play? Well, judging by Crean's implementation of a 20-second shot clock during the Marquette Madness scrimmage, the answer will come sooner rather than later.

If it worked for them…

Marquette can take solace in Villanova's success last season. The Wildcats often played with a four-guard lineup (with no one above 6-4) in 2005-'06 and received a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Villanova fell to eventual champion Florida in the Elite Eight.

The Wildcats overcame their lack of size by swarming the ball on defense and by having two First Team All-Big East players — Randy Foye and Allan Ray — who could just as easily drive for a lay-up as drain a three-pointer.

Now, if only Marquette's guards could keep defenders honest on the perimeter .

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