Marquette Golden Eagles (11-19, 6-13 Big East) vs #4 Connecticut Huskies (27-3, 17-2 Big East)
Date: Saturday, March 7, 2026
Time: 11:30am Central
Location: Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Marquette Stats Leaders
Points: Nigel James, 16.3 ppg
Rebounds: Ben Gold, 5.7 rpg
Assists:
Connecticut Stats Leaders
Points: Solo Ball, 14.1 ppg
Rebounds: Tarris Reed, 7.9 rpg
Assists: Silas Demary, Big East best 6.5 apg
KenPom.com Rankings
Marquette: #91
Connecticut: #10
Game Projection: Connecticut has an 82% chance of victory with a predicted score of 76-66.
Last Time Out: #4 UConn took a 20-10 lead at Gampel Pavilion back on January 4th, but found themselves
up just 34-29 with less than two minutes to go before halftime. The Huskies scored the next seven points of the game dragging across intermission and with a bit over 13 minutes left to go, they had finished an 18-4 run to take a 19 point lead. Sure, MU won the rest of the game 24-21 to end up with a 73-57 loss, but that’s because UConn didn’t score in the final minute.
Since Last We Met: That win moved UConn to 14-1 on the year and 4-0 in the Big East. It was their 10th straight win at the time, and that streak would run out to 18 in a row before St. John’s got them, 81-72, at The Garden. That’s not that big of a deal, but UConn’s 91-84 loss to Creighton at Gampel is kind of a big deal. That’s why their 72-40 demolition of St. John’s only has them in position to need to win to secure at least a share of the regular season conference title instead of playing on Saturday to lock up the outright title. UConn’s offense just went to sleep for a six minute stretch in the middle of the second half where the Bluejays went on a 14-2 run and took a 73-65 lead.
Even that aforementioned demolition of St. John’s didn’t reset UConn’s deck all that much. They needed a 10-0 run to rally and then hold off Seton Hall last Saturday, 71-67, in their second to last regular season game of the year. I’d wager that head coach Dan Hurley is going to have the Huskies dialed in with the Big East title on the line on Saturday…. but it was also kind of on the line in that SHU game and it took some doing to get across the finish line there.
Tempo Free Fun: I’m not going to pretend to try to find ways that Marquette could have a chance to beat UConn. Either they’re going to figure out how to upset a top five team or they’re not. It’s probably going to take some weirdness one way or another, and to be honest, we’ve seen the Huskies beat a top 10 ranked Marquette team in Milwaukee while turning the ball over 25 times. We’re going to need to see something severely weird in order to make an upset of this degree happen.
And so, instead, I’m going to spend time talking about the seeding possibilities for the Big East tournament. Here’s a helpful chart.
Let’s very briefly address the UConn part of this: They don’t actually need to win this game to be the #1 seed in the conference tournament. That’s going to be entirely dependent on Seton Hall beating St. John’s at The Rock on Friday night. In fact, because that game is after this preview publishes but before the MU/UConn game on Saturday, the Huskies are actually going to know whether or not they’re going to be the #1 or the #2 seed. They might be playing to win to share the title, or playing to win to secure the outright title, or facing the chance that they still get a share of the title AND the #1 seed if they lose anyway. What a weird situation for them.
Anyway, for Marquette, there’s a lot of possibilities on deck, none of which will be locked into place by the Seton Hall/St. John’s game. The Golden Eagles can finish anywhere between the #7 seed and the #11 seed, and perhaps most interestingly, there’s only four circumstances — all because of a Marquette loss — that land them as the #11 seed. A win will guarantee that Marquette is either the #7 or the #8 seed. A loss means MU will be #9, #10, or #11. The deciding factor on where exactly they end up will be the winner of Providence at Georgetown and the winner of Xavier at Villanova. MU will only finish as the #11 seed if Georgetown wins and Xavier wins. Any circumstance where Villanova beats the Musketeers leads to Marquette as either the #9 or the #10. The VU/XU game starts on TNT 30 minutes before Marquette’s game starts, while the GU/PC game is the very last game of the entire conference slate, starting at 7pm Central time on truTV.
For what it’s worth, the only difference between being #8 or #9 is what color uniform you get to wear at 3pm Central time on March 11th, as those two seeds open the Big East tournament’s first round.
Marquette Last 10 Games: 4-6 with wins in two of their last three games.
Connecticut Last 10 Games: 8-2 with wins in their last three and five of the last six.
All-Time Series: Connecticut leads, 14-8
Current Streak: The Huskies have won six straight against the Golden Eagles after the 73-57 contest in Storrs earlier this year. UConn has also won 11 of the last 13.
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