With 3:54 remaining in the Marquette men’s basketball team’s Nov. 17 defeat of Maryland Eastern Shore, senior forward Lazar Hayward barreled in from the top of the key for a monstrous dunk. Following that game, Hayward laughed when asked if his dunk was the definition of a paint touch.
“I think so,” he said. “I think that’s the best paint touch we can have.”
With that dunk, Hayward showed exactly why coach Buzz Williams has uttered the words “paint touch” in each of the team’s postgame press conferences. With paint touches come results. Paint touches end in free throws, paint touches open up 3-point attempts and paint touches produce wins.
It would stand to reason then, that when Marquette got the result — an 87-41 blowout — against a hapless Grambling State team Saturday night, it found the paint on a respectable portion of its possessions. Williams agreed.
“I thought it was by far the best game we’ve played,” he said.
There are ways to score against overmatched non-conference competition, but unless the scoring was done right — the way it would need to be done to find success in the Big East — Williams would not be content. And to do it right is to get the ball inside.
The problem had been the Golden Eagles were unsure how to get those paint touches.
Marquette’s guard-oriented teams of recent years boasted wing players who had the confidence and handle to get in the lane with dribble penetration. Other teams have a big man they can simply toss it to inside and tell him to create. The Golden Eagles have neither — yet.
But who they do have is Dwight Buycks, an athletic junior college transfer who appears to improve and gain confidence with each game.
After struggling against MSOE in the team’s only exhibition game, Buycks looked slightly better against Centenary. He then put up 12 points, three rebounds and three assists against Maryland Eastern Shore before recording a near triple-double (10 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists) Saturday night against Grambling State.
“I feel more comfortable in everything that we’re doing,” Buycks said. “Our offense that we’re running, the more we practice it I get more comfortable with it and I know where to take good shots. I can see different angles of our offense.”
Watch the Golden Eagles swing the ball endlessly around the perimeter and its easy to see the need for a player not named Lazar Hayward or Jimmy Butler to take the ball into the paint. But since the freshmen are too green and since Maurice Acker and David Cubillan are more of spot-up shooters, Buycks, with his two years of junior college experience and his scorer mentality, makes the perfect candidate.
“He’s going to have to do that every game for us, especially when the Big East comes around,” Acker said. “From last year, all three of those guys are gone, so we have to step up and find ways to gain those points back. I believe he’s a person that would be able to do it.”
