The Golden Eagles wrap up the regular season by hosting the Red Storm squad that’s already secured the Big East regular season title.
#20 Marquette Golden Eagles (22-8, 13-6 Big East) vs #6 St. John’s Red Storm (26-4, 17-2 Big East)
Date: Saturday, March 8, 2025
Time: 11am Central
Location: A sold out Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The Stakes: It’s Senior Day for Cam Brown, Kam Jones, David Joplin, and Stevie Mitchell. Oh, and after losing at Connecticut, Marquette will probably break their streak of 49 straight weeks in the AP top 25 if they take a loss here.
Marquette Stats Leaders
Points: Kam Jones, 18.5 ppg
Rebounds: David Joplin, 5.3 rpg
Assists: Kam Jones, 6.0 apg
St. John’s Stats Leaders
Points: RJ Luis, 17.8 ppg
Rebounds: Zuby Ejiofor, 8.0 rpg
Assists: Kadary Richmond, 5.1 apg
KenPom.com Rankings
Marquette: #26
St. John’s: #17
Game Projection: Marquette has a 57% chance of victory, with a predicted score of 71-69.
Last Time Out: St. John’s jumped out to an 11-3 lead while Kam Jones picked up two fouls in that time. Seemed like it was not Marquette’s night at The Garden, but the Golden Eagles were up 31-30 at intermission. Eight straight possessions without a point to start the second half was not helpful for Marquette’s chances on Tuesday, February 4th, but they took a 55-54 lead with just over five minutes left.
They didn’t score a field goal the rest of the way, which allowed the Red Storm to get up seven with just over ninety seconds left, and that was that. Final score: #12 St. John’s 70, #11 Marquette 64. STJ was led by 18 points from Kadary Richmond, who fell just two assists short of a triple double. Marquette did a pretty decent job making RJ Luis work for his buckets, as he shot 6-for-17 to get to 17 points…. but he also grabbed up 11 rebounds.
Since Last We Met: That win was the ninth straight for St. John’s at the time, and beating UConn on the road extended that streak to 10 straight. It ended there, as they lost 73-71 at Villanova next time out, but it’s been five straight wins since then. That includes a six point home win over Creighton and a 14 point home win over UConn, which are both great wins. They also squeaked out a six point win at Butler and then didn’t get any separation from Seton Hall until the final five minutes of a 71-61 win in their most recent contest.
The end result is that St. John’s is 6-1 since beating Marquette at MSG, and that’s moved their Big East record to 17-2. That’s more than enough already to clinch an outright regular season conference title, and to be honest? St. John’s is 21-2 in their last 23 games. The good news for Marquette? Both losses were on the road.
Tempo Free Fun: How did St. John’s beat Marquette in the first game? It wasn’t shooting the ball, as the Johnnies connected on precisely half of their two-point attempts and posted a very not good 3-for-16 (19%) from behind the three-point line. Both numbers are sub-par for the Johnnies, who shoot a passable 51% on the season on twos and a very bad 30% on threes. They also didn’t capitalize on free throw attempts, connecting on just 17 of a whopping 31 attempts from the stripe.
It wasn’t keeping track of the ball and/or valuing possession of the ball. St. John’s turned it over more than 20% of the time and only induced a turnover from Marquette on 15% of the Golden Eagles’ possessions. That’s a bad day at the office for the Red Storm, who rank #77 in the country in offensive turnover rate according to KenPom.com and #14 on the defensive side of things.
What St. John’s did do is grab up a metric ton of their own misses. By the end of the game, there were 44 misses available for either team to grab, and the Red Storm got to 21 of them. That’s a rate of nearly 48%. They only got 15 points on that 48%, and yes, that’s only 0.71 points per second chance…. But when the game is decided by six points, and STJ picked up fifteen points by way of getting a second crack at it, that’s obviously way too many.
The problem there is that this isn’t a situation where Marquette had a bad game on the defensive glass or St. John’s had an otherworldly game on the offensive glass. Sure, it was better than average for them against a MU squad that isn’t very good at rebounding, no debate there. But “getting beat on offensive rebounds” is baked into the problem of playing St. John’s because they’re one of the 10 best offensive rebounding teams in the country by rate according to KenPom.com. It’s safe to say that the Johnnies’ offense is dependent on getting those second chances, because they’re only #71 in the country per KenPom and they rank just 7th in the Big East in league games this season in terms of offensive efficiency. They’re just going to get a lot of offensive rebounds, it’s what they do, you can’t be mad that MU’s not getting to the loose balls, STJ is trying like hell to get second chances.
Where Marquette fell down is the fact that the Red Storm got nearly half of their misses. They average just under 38% on the year and barely over 37% in league games. We’re talking about four or five rebounds in the game, maybe more if we’re talking about possessions where St. John’s got a third chance. But in a six point game, heck, a game that Marquette was leading with five minutes to play, four or five extra chances are margins that cost you a game. We know St. John’s is going to miss shots. They have one guy, Deivon Smith, who is a competent three-point shooter, and he’s coming in after missing all seven of his attempts in their last two games. RJ Luis might get named Big East Player of the Year next week, and he’s shooting under 50% on two-pointers on the year, and he’s been worse than that in Big East play.
There are going to be a lot of misses to gather. If Marquette wants to close out the Fiserv Forum for the year with a win, and a win over a top 10 ranked opponent, they have to get big rebounding games from everyone on the roster. They do a great job keeping the ball on offense and a great job taking it away on defense. They’re going to have to devote that kind of mindset to grabbing the ball when it comes off the St. John’s rim in this game. St. John’s will still probably get to a lot of them, because that’s what they want to do. Marquette can’t allow another 40+% outing from them if they want to win.
Marquette Last 10 Games: 5-5 and coming off a loss, but with wins in four of their last six.
St. John’s Last 10 Games: 9-1 and riding a five game winning streak.
All Time Series: Marquette leads, 29-17
Current Streak: The Red Storm winning earlier this season snapped a six game winning streak by the Golden Eagles.
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