It was a great start for Marquette on Saturday at Cintas Center, as Adrien Stevens hit a three-pointer 18 seconds after the Golden Eagles won the opening tipoff.
And that was the end of the good news for Marquette, as Xavier responded to that transgression on their home turf with a 28-7 run. Technically, it was an 18-3 run followed by a 10-0 run after Marquette scored two buckets in the middle, but you get the key points here. Xavier 28, Marquette 10, 12 minutes left in the first half.
Things got worse.
Tre Carroll went about his Big East leading scorer ways, and his third bucket of the game nudged the margin up over 20 for the first time, 43-22, with 5:29 left before halftime. That was the worst that the lead ever got all afternoon in Ohio, though. It was just 16 at the break, and MU had cut it down to just 14 with a Nigel James layup with 39 seconds left before Jovan Milicevic was very mean at the horn.
The second half was intriguing, as Marquette refused to let Xavier score consecutive buckets for a while, and the lead drifted into the single digits. A dunk from Ben Gold made it a five point game with 9:25 left, and the Kiwi got free for a jam again with 7:27 left to make it a three point game.
That’s 47-29 Marquette in an 18-ish minute window. Pretty good, except for the “digging out from a 21 point deficit in the first place” part.
That’s also as close as Marquette would get. Back to back threes from Milicevic and Filip Borovicanin jammed the lead back to 10 with 4:19 to go, and it really started to seem like Marquette was running out of steam. A three from James got MU back to within four with just over two to play, but MU missed some layups, and then there was less than a minute left, and that was that.
Don’t fall behind by 21 is what I’m saying, and definitely don’t do it while the national television broadcast you’re on is talking about how the coaching staff finds this season to be unacceptable and they are going to fix it in the transfer portal when the season ends.
No one wants to hear this, but Royce Parham was good in this game. 24 points on 9-for-14 shooting, 10 rebounds for a double-double, two assists, and two blocks, hell yeah. Nigel James was pretty good too with a 30 point double-double with 12 assists, and that’s his first career double-double. He also had four rebounds and a steal to help out.
Chase Ross was awful, front-rimming a last second otherwise pointless shot to end up at 3-for-12 and a wretched 1-for-7 behind the arc. Six rebounds and five assists is nice, but what the hell, buddy?
Highlights, such as they are, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and TNT Sports:
Up Next: Who wants to say hi to Rick Pitino? St. John’s comes to Fiserv Forum on Wednesday night, with tipoff on TNT scheduled for 8pm Central time. The Red Storm are coming off a literal fistfight on the road against Providence on Saturday, where they ended up with their 11th straight win by a score of 76-69.
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