Can the Golden Eagles boot the Huskies out of the AP top 25 on National Marquette Day?
#9 Marquette Golden Eagles (18-3, 9-1 Big East) vs #25 Connecticut Huskies (15-6, 7-3 Big East)
Date: Saturday, February 1, 2025
Time: 7pm Central
Location: A sold out (and striped out) Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Marquette Stats Leaders
Points: Kam Jones, 18.9 ppg
Rebounds: David Joplin, 5.2 rpg
Assists: Kam Jones, 6.3 apg
Connecticut Stats Leaders
Points: Alex Karaban, 15.0 ppg
Rebounds: Tarris Reed, Jr., 7.0 rpg
Assists: Hassan Diarra, 6.4 apg
KenPom.com Rankings
Marquette: #12
Connecticut: #36
Game Projection: Marquette has a 77% chance of victory, with a predicted score of 77-69.
So Far This Season: So, so much.
UConn started the year with four wins over obviously outmatched opponents before they went out to Hawaii for the Maui Invitational. The Huskies opened up that event by needing a desperate late rally to force overtime against Memphis before ultimately losing, and then letting that cascade into blowing a 46-37 lead against Colorado and losing at the last second, and letting that cascade into losing to Dayton by 18 to finish dead last at Maui.
Back on the mainland, they won eight straight, including toppling Baylor, Texas on the road, Gonzaga at MSG, and starting Big East play 4-0. Okay, so they just caught a bad wave on the islands, everything’s fine, they’re back to the title contender type team that everyone thought they were.
Nope, now they’re alternating losses and wins for the last six games, losing at Villanova, at home to Creighton, and at Xavier. The wins? At Georgetown, Butler, and DePaul….. and the Blue Demons were up 37-29 at the half on Wednesday night. The catch to the losses as of late? Five-star freshman forward Liam McNeeley has been out for each of the last seven games, and the Huskies only beat Providence by three points in the first game that McNeeley missed.
Tempo Free Fun: Let’s start the whole thing with figuring out what we know right now about Liam McNeeley. He has an high ankle sprain, suffered during their win against DePaul back on New Year’s Day. Head coach Dan Hurley said at the time that McNeeley might be back by the end of the January. Saturday is, of course, the first day of February, so that’s officially in the window of where he could play again. Hurley said after practice on Tuesday earlier this week that McNeeley would be a game-time decision at home against the Blue Demons, but ultimately he did not play.
With that in mind, let’s presume that McNeeley is going to play against Marquette because he was a “let’s see what he feels like that day” on Wednesday, and another couple of days of recovery moves him a little bit towards the “totally fine to play” side of the ledger.
We’re going to cut UConn a little bit of slack and just ignore whatever happened in Maui. Maybe not so much ignore it, but at least pretend that they learned a lot about themselves in those three games and so the seven straight wins with McNeeley afterwards are useful information for what the Huskies would be against Marquette with him back in the lineup.
To the BartTorvik.com Data Sorter!
It seems that the UConn from that stretch of basketball is kind of the same UConn that you get if you look at their data in any other fashion.
7 Game Winning Streak With McNeeley (nationally)
Offensive Efficiency: #3
Defensive Efficiency: #68
Full Season (nationally)
Offensive Efficiency: #12
Defensive Efficiency: #125
In Big East Competition (out of 11 BE teams)
Offensive Efficiency: #2
Defensive Efficiency: #6
During Big East play (nationally)
Offensive Efficiency: #21
Defensive Efficiency: #136
Let’s be very clear about it: UConn is going to be the best version of themselves this season with Liam McNeeley on the floor. During the seven straight wins after Maui before he was injured, the Huskies were a terror on the offensive end of the floor and not great on defense. You can maybe get away with not being so hot on defense when you’re forcing teams to keep up with you because of how many points you’re putting on the board. “Excellent on one end, passable on the other” will win you a lot of ball games. One of the reasons why their defense wasn’t so hot during the winning streak is because the Huskies were straight up awful at forcing turnovers: #319 in the country, less than 15% of possessions. Your efficiency at stopping the ball going through the net gets pretty good pretty quick if you just stop shots from going up in the first place, and UConn just had nothing going on in that department. They were also hilariously foul-prone, coughing up one of the 30 worst free throw attempts allowed rates in the country during that timespan. Very few empty possessions + lots of shooting with the clock stopped = a rough time for the ol’ efficiency.
So here’s the catch then: Those are just Connecticut’s generalized problems this year.
For the whole season, Torvik has the Huskies at #219 at generating turnovers and #343 at defensive free throw rate. In conference games only, UConn ranks sixth in the Big East in turnover rate and 10th in defensive FTR. They can really shoot it, ranking #71 for the whole year in three-point shooting percentage, #7 in two-point shooting, and #10 in effective field goal percentage. If you let Alex Karaban and Solo Ball get clean looks at the rim from long range, you are in a world of hurt that you are going to struggle to come back from no matter what UConn’s flaws are on the other end. But the flaws are there, and if you’re a team that doesn’t turn it over much — hey, look, that’s Marquette — and you’re a team that can create pressure and disruptions on defense — hey, look, that’s Marquette! — then you have a recipe to score enough to win and defend enough to win.
Oh, right. I should probably at least address the possibility of McNeeley not playing, right?
Over the last seven games without McNeeley (nationally)
Offensive Efficiency: #40
Defensive Efficiency: #147
T-Rank: #65
They’re not a tournament team without him.
A good team, but a flawed team, one that has the components to beat you if you don’t take them seriously. But also a clear step down from what they can be with McNeeley and all cylinders firing properly.
Which UConn are we going to get on Saturday? No idea.
Marquette Last 10 Games: 9-1, with wins in their last three games.
Connecticut Last 10 Games: 7-3, but 3-3 in their last six games.
All-Time Series: Connecticut leads, 11-8
Current Streak: The entirety of last year’s 3-0 run against Marquette, including the 73-57 victory in the Big East title game, is the current difference in the series as well as the current active streak in the series. UConn has won eight of the last 10 meetings as well.
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