With FanDuel pitching the line at 13.5 on Tuesday morning when I was throwing together the Game Thread, and with KenPom.com estimating the margin at 17 points, I wasn’t holding out a lot of hope for a victory
as Marquette headed to Madison Square Garden to face St. John’s that night.
And then the official Big East availability report came out three hours before tip-off, and Marquette senior forward Ben Gold was ruled out by way of an ankle injury as noted by the team on Twitter moments later.
Yeah, that’s not a thing I need to watch, and so I spent the first part of my evening wrapping up the most recent season of Great British Baking Show. THIS JUST IN: Cake is delicious. I hadn’t quite hit play on the episode on Netflix before glancing at Peacock streaming on my iPad, and that’s when I saw that Marquette was down 12-2. A glance at Ye Olde Stat Broadcast tells us that’s because of a 9-0 Johnnies run to get there. I glanced again a little bit later, and: 17-7 St. John’s. Yes, feeling very smart about my emotional hedge here.
I have to acknowledge that Marquette did not roll over and die after going down 11 points, 26-15, with 10:26 to play in the first half. A bucket from Royce Parham got the margin as low as five points with just under six left to go before intermission, and the lead never got back to double digits the rest of the first 20.
It did get back there right away in the second as St. John’s got buckets from Dylan Mitchell and Zuby Ejiofor out of the gate, but there was Marquette, cutting it back down to six. It started to feel like Marquette’s hands on the rope were starting to slip as the lead went to 10, then 13, then back to 12. A layup from Parham made it 10 with 11:12 to go, and that’s when the rope slipped.
13-0 St. John’s in just over three minutes, Johnnies up 23. That’s when I got up and moved to the desktop to write the recap, because it’s just easier to see my writing window and the Stat Broadcast scoring ledger side by side instead of on the iPad with my Bluetooth keyboard. The lead maxed out at 24 a couple of times down the stretch before settling there at the final horn, 92-68.
In terms of what went wrong here? It doesn’t really matter, but Marquette couldn’t stop the Johnnies inside as they went 28-for-46 on two point attempts, which is over 60%. Holding the Red Storm to just 26% on long range attempts was generally meaningless. Committing 19 turnovers did not help the Golden Eagles, but MU had 10 in the first half when things weren’t falling apart on them at a rapid pace. Marquette did not really limit Zuby Ejiofor, as he “only” had 22 points and seven rebounds, but he also only played 26 minutes and shot 8-for-11, all on twos.
Highlights, such as they are, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and NBC Sports/Peacock:
Up Next: There’s nothing to take away from this, as there’s a pretty solid chance that a tournament-bound version of Marquette would have lost this game anyway. However, next time out, that’s a different issue. Next time out is the yearly trip to Wintrust Arena to face DePaul, and for the first time in Shaka Smart’s tenure, they will have to do that without David Joplin’s Chicago Dog-powered shooting to help them out. Tipoff on that one on Friday is set for 7:30pm Central time, and FS1 will have the broadcast. The Blue Demons are 10-7 overall but 2-4 in Big East play after losing 72-60 at UConn back on Saturday.
Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media
Facebook: AnonymousEagle
Instagram: AnonymousEagleSBN
Bluesky: AnonymousEagle
