Marquette Golden Eagles (9-16, 4-10 Big East) at Xavier Musketeers (12-12, 4-9 Big East)
Date: Saturday, February 14, 2026
Time: 2pm Central
Location: Cintas Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
Marquette Stats Leaders
Points: Nigel James, 15.2 ppg
Rebounds: Ben Gold, 5.5 rpg
Assists: Nigel James, 4.7 apg
Marquette Injury Note: Sean Jones has missed the last ten games with a foot issue. After last Saturday’s game against Butler, Shaka Smart said he is not sure if Jones will be able to get back on the court before the end of the regular season.
Xavier Stats Leaders
Points: Tre Carroll, 18.0 ppg, best in the Big East Rebounds: Filip Borovicanin,
7.9 rpg Assists: Filip Borovicanin, 4.3 apg
KenPom.com Rankings
Marquette: #101
Xavier: #95
Game Projection: Xavier has a 65% chance of victory, with a predicted score of 79-75.
The Stakes: Marquette has 10 Big East losses. Their next Big East loss will give the Golden Eagles a losing record in conference play for the first time under the direction of head coach Shaka Smart.
The Stakes, Part 2: A Marquette victory will even the two teams at 5-10 in Big East play this year, but it would give the Golden Eagles the season series sweep at 2-0 and thus the tiebreaker when it comes time to seed the Big East tournament.
Last Time Out: With Marquette riding a six game losing streak and sitting at 0-4 in the Big East, the Golden Eagles kept building a lead on the Musketeers at Fiserv Forum on January 7th, eventually getting it to 53-40 with just under 12 minutes left. That’s exactly when Marquette gave up an 11-0 run to the Musketeers to tilt the game back into doubt, but MU rebuilt their margin back up to seven as the clock moved towards four minutes left.
But then six straight from the Musketeers, and a bad turnover by Chase Ross, one of eight in the game for the Texas, allowed XU to go up 65-64 with just over two minutes to play. ANOTHER Ross turnover made things look bad, but Marquette got a stop and after a pair of very bad Nigel James attempts in the lane, Ben Gold got free for a quick dunk on a pass from James and Marquette was up one with under a minute left. Xavier missed a three on the other end, Ross rebounded, Xavier didn’t foul on the possession, Gold missed a free throw off a rebound attempt, and then hustled back to bother Malik Messina-Moore’s last second attempt to win just enough that he missed to lock in MU’s first Big East win of the season.
Since Last We Met: At the time, the loss dropped the Musketeers to 1-4 in Big East play. They caught a scheduling break with their next two games, getting both Providence and Butler at home and getting a pair of double digit wins in each of them. That moved them to 3-4 in the league and 11-7 overall and that was juuuuuuuust enough hope where you look at Xavier and say “well, maybe things are pivoting in a nice direction for them?”
Maybe they were, but the scheduling gods have done them no favors. Five of their last six have been against Creighton, St. John’s, Seton Hall, and UConn, with all of those falling as road games except for their second game against the Johnnies of the season to get to five games against four opponents. All of those were losses, although there was varying degrees of defeat. By one at Creighton because there was a scramble for a long free throw rebound and a winner at the buzzer? In overtime at Madison Square Garden where it was the Red Storm that had to hit the shot to force the extra session? By 6 at home against that St. John’s team? These aren’t bad losses.
By 18 at Seton Hall and 32 at UConn? Those are bad losses.
Heck, Xavier’s one win in their last six games isn’t even a good win, and not because it was by two at home against DePaul. Xavier trailed 61-45 with less than 10 minutes left in the game and then went on a 21-2 run that ended with a Filip Borovicanin bucket with 16 seconds left to put XU up 66-63. AND THEY STILL NEEDED A BUZZER BEATER FROM BOROVICANIN TO WIN because CJ Gunn hit a three with nine seconds left on a not-well-executed version of Jenkins For The Championship for the Blue Demons.
Tempo Free Fun: Let’s start with a hypothetical stemming from the first meeting between Marquette and Xavier.
How much do you think Marquette would have won by if Chase Ross wasn’t stinking out the joint?
Okay, stinking out the joint is strong for a guy who had nine rebounds, three assists, and five steals. Ross also shot just 5-for-14 from the field and had eight turnovers. For the sake of argument, let’s say that half of Ross’ nine misses go in, either because he’s not having a bad day or because someone else ends up taking the shot. Let’s say that half of his eight turnovers turn into MU shots instead, and half of those four go in. That’s six extra buckets for the Golden Eagles if my math is mathing properly, which sounds an awful lot like 12 points for Marquette just disappearing into the ether back on January 7th because Ross was not just off, but waaaaay off.
Let me tell you what: Beating Xavier by 13 points sounds like a lot more fun than only winning by one.
Am I being outlandish in my descriptions and accounts of that game? Maybe, because if individual plays go differently, that alters how each thing after it occurs, sure. However, Marquette was winning by 13 with less than 12 minutes left. It’s not completely impossible to think that Marquette could have held that margin together to the end of the game. After all, Ross had two late nearly-game-breaking turnovers, right? You see my math here.
A different hypothetical for you: What if Marquette just, y’know, decides to defend Malik Messina-Moore this time? He had a game high 22 points on 7-for-13 shooting including 4-for-6 from behind the arc, which means he was 4-for-5 before lifting the prayer at the horn. That was a big reason why Xavier shot 46% on three-pointers in the game, and again: They were technically better than that because of the last second miss.
Keeping it on the shooting front, Marquette has to find a way to be way better against the Xavier defense this time around. 48% on two-pointers isn’t too bad, and Not Chase Ross shot 50%. MU was straight up terrible on three-pointers in the first meeting, connecting on just 23% as Adrien Stevens (3-for-6) and Damarius Owens (2-for-3) had all of Marquette’s five makes in the contest. The Golden Eagles caught a massive break with their shooting in the first game against Xavier, as they pulled in 44% of their misses. That’s out of character for both the Golden Eagles (#190 in the country at 31%) and the Musketeers (#109 in the country at 29%), so it seems very unlikely that MU will be able to bolster their offensive attack with second chances in the visit to southwestern Ohio.
It also seems unlikely that Marquette is going to be able to limit Xavier to just 31% shooting on tw0-point attempts for another 40 minutes. Messina-Moore and Tre Carroll were the only two Musketeers to have a positive impact inside the arc in the first meeting as they combined for nine of XU’s 11 makes.
So now that I’ve thrown the fear of God into you about Marquette’s chances of repeating the performance that earned them a 66-65 win in the first meeting, let me give you some sunshine. In MU’s last 10 games, which is everything from the first Xavier game onwards, the Golden Eagles have been playing like the #53 team in the country according to BartTorvik.com’s data sorting. They’ve had the #70 offense and the #56 defense. Xavier has been trailing behind MU in that timeframe, ranking #69 in the country and hovering right around #80 on both ends of the court.
During Marquette’s 3-3 run in the last six games as they’ve alternated wins and losses, they’ve been the #39 team in the country, coming in at #57 on offense and #38 on defense. Xavier? #89, including falling way down to #168 in the country on the defensive end of the floor.
In the last four games, which has been Marquette’s best and most consistent game in/game out stretch of play this season according to Torvik’s game scores: The Golden Eagles are a top 15 team, using the #8 defense in the the country across the last three weeks to balance out the #76 offense. Xavier? #104 in the country, with sub-110 ranks on both offense and defense.
If you use the Torvik filtering to adjust the projections for Saturday’s games…… Torvik’s projection goes from Xavier wins, 80-76, to Marquette wins, 80-70. If Marquette can turn in a fifth straight performance at that level, that is. It would mean finding a way to win somewhere other than in the Deer District in Milwaukee for the first time this season, but the trends say that MU has an edge.
Marquette Last 10 Games: 4-6, but alternating wins and losses in the last six games.
Xavier Last 10 Games: 3-7 with losses in their last two and five of their last six.
All Time Series: Marquette leads, 62-28.
Current Streak: Marquette has won two straight against Xavier after the win in Milwaukee earlier this season. That means the Golden Eagles have won seven of the last eight in the series.
Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media
Facebook: AnonymousEagle
Instagram: AnonymousEagleSBN
Bluesky: AnonymousEagle
