If your snap reaction to Marquette men’s basketball turning a nine point halftime lead on Monday into a 27 point win was “ah, well, first game of the season, they tried some stuff for 20 minutes and then buckled up from there, that second half is more like what we’ll get on Wednesday,” well, I have bad news for you.
With 12:54 left in the first half, Southern’s J Manning drained a three-pointer to finish burning off Marquette’s seven point lead from a little over three minutes earlier, and about 90
seconds later, T Dixon dunked for a 7-0 run, 13-2 overall for the visiting Jaguars, and they were up 22-18 with 11:28 left before intermission.
And everyone laughed at me when I thought that Chase Ross clanking a pre-tipoff administrative technical foul free throw off the front of the rim was an ominous sign.
In short, Marquette was still figuring some things out in their third half of the season. One of the most obviously visible things they were figuring out? How to deal with Southern’s attitude towards bringing the ball up as fast as possible. It felt like every bucket that Southern scored in the first half was a result of pushing pace as hard as possible up the floor even if only two buckets and a set of free throws actually got labeled as fast break points by Stat Broadcast.
Marquette answered that burst from the Jaguars with Sean Jones triggering an 11-0 run with an and-one layup, and that got the margin back to seven, 29-22. Marquette struggled to get it past that point — they eventually would on a Jones layup with 47 seconds left in the half — and so they went into the locker room up just six, 43-37, partially because Chase Ross made a deeply silly decision to jump with SU’s Cam Amboree as he rose and fired a three-pointer right before the horn. Amboree sank two of his three attempts — this was the free throws that got marked as fast break — and MU had to think about things for a moment.
They took a while coming back out to truly solve their problems. Caedin Hamilton dunked to go up 12 — this was the first time all night they were up double digits — but Southern took it right back to a seven point game with five points from D Jones by himself. Back to 12? A three pointer from Oshodi, and there was less than 12:20 to go and this was still competitive.
That means it was a great time for Marquette’s longest extended run of the game. 12 straight points with four different guys putting the ball in the net, and a bucket from Ben Gold nudged the Golden Eagles’ margin north of 20 for the first time. There was still over 10 minutes left to go, but that was probably the true end of the Jaguars’ threat in this game. MU had answers for them, Chase Ross with a transition dunk, Chase Ross with a transition three, both pushing the margin back over 20, Damarius Owens getting a triple with 4:04 to play for a 21 point lead, all combined to make Southern’s late 7-0 run essentially useless towards the end result.
And then Michael Phillips — WHO HAD NOT PLAYED AT ALL YET IN THIS GAME — ran wild, canning three-pointers on three straight possessions, and suddenly it was a 20 point game again with 64 seconds left to go. Officially it goes into the books as an 18 point win, 100-82, with Ben Gold shooting some free throws to get Marquette to the century mark to wrap up Shaka Smart’s 100th victory as MU head coach. He has tied Tom Crean for the second fewest number of games to get to 100, with both men falling three games short of Hank Raymonds’ tenure for fastest to 100 victories.
Quietly: The defense was not good again in the second half, this time giving up 1.098 points per possession, but you couldn’t really tell that it mattered from watching because the offense was putting up 1.39 per trip down the floor. It’s great that the offense has figured itself out at halftime for two straight games, but less great that the defense has suffered at the same time.
All five Marquette starters got to double digits in this game with Gold using those late freebies to get to 10 even. He just missed a double-double with a team high nine rebounds, too. Chase Ross is the top scorer here, getting 23 points on 8-for-13 shooting, while Zaide Lowery, Caedin Hamilton, and Sean Jones all added 12. Ross also led the team in assists, getting six helpers on the 27 buckets that he didn’t score himself.
How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and ESPN+?
Up Next: Hopefully these two first halves gave Marquette enough of a chance to figure things out about how they want to go about their business when business picks up, because said pick up is coming on Sunday. It comes in the form of a neutral site game against Indiana. Tipoff at the United Center in Chicago is scheduled for Noon Central, and ESPN will have the broadcast. The Hoosiers played their first game of the season on Wednesday night and came away with a 98-51 victory over Alabama A&M, a team that’s projected by KenPom.com to go 9-9 in the same SWAC that Southern is favored to win at 13-5.
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