When Solo Ball hit a three-pointer to put #4 UConn up 9-5 with just over three minutes gone in Saturday’s Marquette men’s basketball regular season finale, I thought to myself, “well, Marquette’s in trouble here.” Ball has not been shooting the three well this season, and hitting his first attempt of the game felt like a very ominous note for the Golden Eagles.
As it turns out, that would be the only made three-pointer of the entire first half for the Huskies.
UConn’s inability to knock down the long
ball — they went 1-10 in the first half — helped keep the door open for Marquette, and that chipped into the Golden Eagles tightening the clamps in the Huskies in the first half. Tarris Reed scored for the visitors with 16:21 left in the first half and UConn would not get another point until the 10:29 mark and they went without a field goal until the 10:04 mark. You’d think that streak of stops — Marquette got a dead skunk in there, nine stops in a row — would have meant the Golden Eagles were building a lead, but UConn got six straight stops of their own. As such, when Silas Demary finally broke the UConn FG drought, that pulled the Huskies within one, 16-15.
That failure to take advantage of UConn’s miscues reared its head as the half went along, and the Huskies went up by eight on a pair of free throws by Jaylin Ross with less than three minutes left in the half. MU tightened things up, and seven straight points from Adrien Stevens helped Marquette get into position for Nigel James to take one step too many right at the horn and splash a two at the buzzer and not a three after review. Marquette was down two, 35-33, at the break, instead of down just one.
Still, you take that against the #4 team in the country, but the whole “UConn missed a lot of shots” thing loomed. Clearly they were not going to keep missing shots, right?
Dear reader, UConn shot 2-for-14 on three-pointers in the second half and just 30.4% from the field overall.
Solo Ball hit UConn’s second triple of the game with 17:17 left in the game, and that broke up a 6-0 Marquette burst…. powered…. by… is this right? Powered by back-to-back buckets from Caedin Hamilton? Including a sick power dunk off a dish from Nigel James?
Ball’s triple got UConn up three after the tie at 39, and Eric Riebe scored in the paint to get the Huskies up four. Royce Parham had absolutely enough of that nonsense, and he scored eight straight himself. A pair of threes back-to-back, then a pumpfake/drive/stop/floater combo. Chase Ross added a layup and Adrien Stevens hit one of two free throws for an 11-0 Marquette run and a seven point lead, 52-45.
No, really, Marquette up seven on the #4 team in the country. Nearly 12 minutes left, though….
A Nigel James triple made it an eight point game.
Back-to-back threes from Chase Ross, a guy who has struggled with his shot all over the floor all season long, made it a 9-2 burst, 20-4 going back to the start of the 11-0 run, and Marquette was up 12….
…. with 5:26 to go.
That’s the thing, Marquette never stopped shutting UConn down even when it wasn’t quite the greatest day on Marquette’s end of the floor. Five straight stops triggered that 11-0 run. Another skunk propelled Marquette forward even while the Golden Eagles committed three turnovers on the other end. It’s not fun, and you’d like to build a lead, but there’s worse ways to go through things than just burning clock when you’re up eight.
Braylon Mullins answered the Ross three-pointers with one of his own with just over five minutes left. If you are paying attention, you have realized that this was UConn’s last three-pointer of the game and Marquette was up nine. Do you know what helped MU out big time in this second half? They stopped giving up offensive rebounds. UConn made up for their nine missed threes in the first half by getting 12 second chances on 20 total opportunities. That’s 60%. That’s real bad for Marquette. In the second half? Just four on 16 possible opportunities, and I will sign up for just 25% offensive rebounding rate given up every single day of the week. If that was Marquette’s season long average, that would be #8 in the country. That’s elite rebounding when MU really needed it.
Where were we? Oh, right, Marquette by 9, then just seven with under four left. Then just six with 3:10 left. Nigel James wove through traffic for a layup in transition, but he missed…. and Ben Gold did not.
Marquette kept sending Connecticut to the line and Marquette kept not putting anything up on the board on the other end. By 6, by 4, by 2, but now there’s 43 seconds left. UConn was happy to let Marquette play it out, and they got the stop on a James miss. 12 seconds left, get a stop and win, no matter what, do not give up a three.
It turned into a Silas Demary drive, and the rebound bounced around eventually to Chase Ross, who was fouled by Alex Karaban with, as video replay determined, one second left. In a reasonable world, this means that, because that was UConn’s ninth foul of the half, Ross would shoot a one-and-one, and if he missed the first, they could rebound it and throw in an 80 foot prayer and win. If he missed the second, they could rebound it and throw in an 80 foot prayer to tie. The point is that there was a theoretical chance for UConn to win the game here as Ross went to the line.
Except Dan Hurley is not a reasonable man.
The UConn head coach was, apparently, incensed at the lack of a foul on Demary’s drive and the ensuing rebound, and he absolutely bumped John Gaffney. You can see Gaffney issue the technical foul. At some point as the refs were reviewing the clock, Pat Driscoll calmly turned to Hurley and just pointed to the tunnel. I suspect that either 1) He was already issued his second technical foul and was tossed or 2) Hurley had been told “you’ve already got the one, do you want another?” and Driscoll pointing was merely giving Hurley what was promised.
And so, Chase Ross shot not one, not two, but SIX free throws. He went 2-for-4 on the technicals, splitting each pair, and effectively ending the game with Marquette up four. Just to make sure, the senior from Texas made them both, and so, Marquette head coach Shaka Smart was able to sub in senior walk-ons Jonah Lucas and Casey O’Malley to be on the floor as UConn inbounded to end the game, and also get both Ben Gold and Chase Ross their senior ovations.
This has been a horrible, awful Marquette season by any measure. But this horrible, awful Marquette team just beat the #4 team in the country AND they were able to lock down the win for sure because the two-time national championship winning head coach of the #4 team in the country had an absolute meltdown and cost his team the precise amount of points to eradicate their last miracle chance of winning the game.
Oh, and it cost UConn a share of the Big East regular season title, as they finish a game behind St. John’s because of the loss.
What a day.
Marquette was led by 19 points from Nigel James, who also had seven assists. In a rare circumstance, Marquette got the win here even though James had not just more than two turnovers, but six of ‘em. Chase Ross added 14 plus five rebounds and three assists, Royce Parham had 13 points and five rebounds, and Adrien Stevens got into double digits with 11 points. Ben Gold was hampered by foul trouble for a lot of the game, finishing with just 15 minutes played, but you could easily argue that his putback dunk was the most pivotal bucket of the contest.
Highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Fox Sports:
Up Next: Actually, we don’t know for sure yet. We know that Marquette is either going to be the #7 or the #8 seed in the Big East tournament, and that means a game on Wednesday in the first round. Their placement is going to be dependent on the winner of Georgetown/Providence tonight. I should note that the winner of the 7/10 game does get the #2 seed in the quarterfinals, and the #2 is UConn, and I’d imagine there’s at least a chance that the league office suspends Dan Hurley for bumping the official.
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