If you listen carefully, you can hear the net pop after Tucker DeVries hit another shot at the United Center.
We could probably spend a whole hell of a long time dissecting exactly what went wrong for Marquette
men’s basketball down in the Windy City on the first Sunday of the 2025-26 season, but here’s the biggest problem: Tucker DeVries shot 8-for-12 in the first half, including 5-for-7 from long range. Guy #1 On The Scouting Report ran wild, adding four rebounds, two assists, and a steal to his 24 first half points, and the Indiana Hoosiers looked every part of a team that deserved their one 25th place vote in the preseason Associated Press poll. At the break, it was 56-38, and at that point, Marquette’s best hope for winning the game laid in the idea that DeVries would somehow get locked in the bathroom during halftime.
He didn’t.
He did, however, pick up his fourth foul in the game and third of the second half with 13:15 left to go, not long after Zaide Lowery had cashed a three-pointer to slice Indiana’s lead down to just 10 points. The problem is that DeVries had just hit a three shortly before departing with four fouls, and as it would turn out, that was the first bucket in a 13-2 run for the Hoosiers. DeVries would not score again in the game, but it was pretty much all over for Marquette at that point, trailing 78-57 with 10:44 to go. The effort to slash the margin down to just 10 in the first six minutes and change of the period was now all for naught, and MU was in fact down 21 for the first time all game.
The closest they would get the rest of the way was 17 with 8:57 to play, and the deficit would balloon as large as 25 in the final three minutes.
My thought at halftime — pick whatever you want to be the reason why Marquette was down 18, you’re correct to think that — was based both on watching in person in the United Center, but also borne out by the Four Factors. MU was losing effective field goal percentage, they were losing turnover rate, they were losing offensive rebounding rate, and with both teams attempting more than 15 free throws in the first 20 minutes, Marquette’s advantage in attempt rate there wasn’t really helping out all that much.
The eFG battle and turnover battle stayed in Indiana’s favor at the final horn. Marquette was able to turn offensive rebounding in their direction, but we can chalk that up to “Indiana spent most of the second half not caring about gathering their misses.” They also shot 52% from the field in the second half, so you definitely do not need to care about your misses when you are up double digits and there are only 17 misses.
One last note about this game: It was 24-24 when the clock clicked from 10:00 left in the first half to 9:59. Everything fell apart after that and just kept falling apart.
There are highlights on YouTube if you’re so inclined, but I’m not going to put them in here because lol what do you mean there are 3:06 worth of highlights from this game?
Up Next: Marquette has until 7pm Central time on Wednesday to figure out exactly what went wrong here and why they couldn’t do anything about stopping it from going wrong. That’s when Little Rock shows up at Fiserv Forum, and ESPN+ will have the broadcast there. The Trojans are 1-0 on the year after beating something called Arkansas Baptist 92-63 back on Tuesday. They have a Monday night game against Milwaukee in UWM Panther Arena, so I presume they’ll be out and around town on Tuesday.
Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media
Facebook: AnonymousEagle
Instagram: AnonymousEagleSBN
Bluesky: AnonymousEagle
