If you are not pre-season Top 10....

[erudited]

Louisville fan here. Unreal performance from your Shockers tonight. I know you lose some pieces. But with what you have back, and considering that you have one of the best young coaches in the game, I will be "shocked" if you don't come in as a Top 10 team next year. I never, EVER want to see the Cards face your team again. If we do, I hope it's another Final Four.

Congrats on one hell of a season. We faced no better team all year.

[jocoshock]

Great game. Tip of the hat, but please don't say you don't want to play us again. Let's make it a series...

[SirShoxAlot]

Louisville fans are the classiest. Because of the way you guys have treated us before and after a fantastic game, I will forever root for the Cards against anyone but Valley teams and, of course, the Shockers. I really like Pitino for all the respect he has given us. Hope you guys take home the title!

[shock-it-to-me]

Louisville fan here. Unreal performance from your Shockers tonight. I know you lose some pieces. But with what you have back, and considering that you have one of the best young coaches in the game, I will be "shocked" if you don't come in as a Top 10 team next year. I never, EVER want to see the Cards face your team again. If we do, I hope it's another Final Four.

Congrats on one @#!*% of a season. We faced no better team all year.

Apparently, you're not well acquainted with life in a mid-major conference. lol We'll be lucky to be in the 'others receiving votes'. Then, after we open up 19-1, we finally sneak into the top 25, but one bad loss at Northern Iowa and out we go. Doesn't matter, though, because as we proved this year, we just need a spot in the tournament. We'll take it from there :)

Here's hoping Louisville lays the smack down on Monday.

[Rcamp]

The Louisvile fan may be Giving to much credit saying SHOX will be per season top 10, but in a way he is right. WSU has earned a level of respect that the pollsters will have a hard time ignoring. Given the loss of seniors, it is hard to rank them high, but im guessing preseason top 20.

[Aargh]

We've got 4 of our top 7 coming back. If anyone will consider our injury situation, we've got 5 of our top 7 coming back from a F4 team. How many F4 teams have that?

[shock-it-to-me]

We've got 4 of our top 7 coming back. If anyone will consider our injury situation, we've got 5 of our top 7 coming back from a F4 team. How many F4 teams have that?

Yeah, but how many F4 teams play in the Missouri Valley? I have a feeling most will consider our run a 'fluke' until we accomplish something similar another time or two.

[MadaboutWu]

Fair enough, but only one of our top 3.

[jocoshock]

Yeah, but how many F4 teams play in the Missouri Valley? I have a feeling most will consider our run a 'fluke' until we accomplish something similar another time or two.

We will just have to do it all over again. We know there is at least one team that still has its head in the sand. We will see how many develop amnesia over the summer...

[another shocker]

'former mvc, we had to rib you a bit, just like creighton will get the same treatment when we meet again.. who know's when.

'shockers next year are going to be.. well.. did you see my earlier post? here's a clue: #1

[WSUwatcher]

Louisville fan here. Unreal performance from your Shockers tonight. I know you lose some pieces. But with what you have back, and considering that you have one of the best young coaches in the game, I will be "shocked" if you don't come in as a Top 10 team next year. I never, EVER want to see the Cards face your team again. If we do, I hope it's another Final Four.

Congrats on one hell of a season. We faced no better team all year.

Erudite, indeed. Thanks for your gracious post.

You sound like Apollo Creed -- "ain't gonna be no rematch." That's appropriate in a couple of ways, because during one of Coach Marshall's interviews this past week, some talking head said WSU was more like Rocky than Cinderella, and Marshall agreed, regarding it as the compliment it was intended to be. The Shocks were definitely much more Rocky Balboa than Cinderella, and I was hoping the WSU pep band might at some point play the fanfare that echoed throughout the movie. (Maybe they even did; I was watching at home as best I could with some family interruptions, so I have no clue what actually was heard inside the Georgia Dome.)

I liked the comparison, too, and thought it far more apt than the Cinderella cliches, but the other thing that reminded me of the original "Rocky," and the one thing that bothered me about it, was that in his first fight with Creed, Rocky lost. Needless to say, that was not the outcome I was looking for. And for most of the game I thought we might be about to skip directly to Rocky II -- but no such luck. Your guys showed their poise and quality, and they stepped up and simply made a few more big plays and stops than the Shocks did. The tough break on the missed FT at the end and the resulting bogus held ball provided the clincher (although surely Pitino would have had his guys foul to prevent a possible tying three anyway, wouldn't he?), but the bottom line is that you have to play all 40 minutes, and Louisville performed just a little bit better for the game as a whole, and especially when it mattered most. Your team deserved to win.

I hope you win Monday, and I hope that just as in the Rocky sequel, there is indeed a rematch. Personally, I'd love to see a whole series of them. But regardless of whether it's a scheduled game -- how about starting with a made-for-TV showcase in Brooklyn next year? -- or another meeting deep (I hope) in the tournament (or maybe even a combination of both), I have to believe WSU and Marshall would go in with the same feeling of unfinished business that has carried your team this year. And I also hope that spirit of wanting to finish the job drives next year's Shockers, many of whom will be holdovers from this team, back to the Final Four in Arlington, and this time maybe one game further. Meanwhile, good luck to you and the Cardinals.

[Rosewood]

I'll be shocked if we get such love. I've always said the rankings at the start of the year don't mean ****. But that was outsider looking in Rosewood. Rosewood coming off a Final Four may have a different attitude in the fall.

[Awesome Sauce Malone]

one does not simply....


aww screw it

[ShockerFever]

Thanks for the kind words. We're losing a decent chunk of players/starters just like we did last year, so I doubt we get a preseason Top 25 vote..

[GoShockers89]

I think there's a lot positive to be said for "how" we lost tonight. When VCU made their run, they always looked undersized and capitalized on an amazing gimmick defense. Butler was able to do what they did behind the sheer brilliance of Brad Stevens- athletically, those teams were Evansville on steroids. Hayward was a nice Korver-ish level talent but every other player they had would have fit in perfectly on most MVC teams.

We, on the other hand, simply looked like we belong during this run. No gimmicks. No superhuman efforts from kids with 3" verticals. This was more 1976 UNLV than 2006 George Mason. A bunch of Syracuse and Michigan fans around me were saying that we looked like the BCS superpower for most of tonight- athletically, stylistically, coaching, matching up man to man, all of it.

This run is just the start folks. Buckle up.