The Golden Eagles return to Fiserv Forum in search of answers as to what’s going wrong in their season.
#21 Marquette Golden Eagles (20-7, 11-5 Big East) vs Providence Friars (12-15, 6-10 Big East)
Date: Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Time: 6pm Central
Location: Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Marquette Stat Leaders
Points: Kam Jones, 18.6 ppg
Rebounds: David Joplin, 5.2 rpg
Assists: Kam Jones, 5.9 apg
Providence Stat Leaders
Points: Bensley Joseph, 13.1 ppg
Rebounds: Oswin Erhunmwunse, 5.4 rpg
Assists: Bensley Joseph and Jayden Pierre, 3.2 apg
Providence Injury Notes: Corey Floyd has missed the last three games due to concussion protocols. He is averaging 9.4 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 2.0 assists this season and had started the previous 11 games for the Friars and 20 of his 24 appearances. Jabri Abdur-Rahim is out for the rest of the season after knee surgery. He was averaging 7.2 points and 2.6 rebounds. Wesley Cardet played more than five minutes against Georgetown last week, marking the first time he had done that since January 14th. He’s averaging 9.0 points and 3.3 rebounds.
KenPom.com Rankings
Marquette: #28
Providence: #86
Game Projection: Marquette has an 86% chance of victory, with a predicted score of 79-67.
Last Time Out: Waaaaaaay back on New Year’s Eve, Marquette uncorked a 26-2 run in the first 10 minutes on the road at the AMP, tacked on another 12-2 run right before halftime, and then after Providence trimmed the margin to just 20 points with a little more than five minutes left, MU threw another 12-0 run on top of things for a 78-50 victory to move to 12-2 overall and 3-0 in the Big East.
Since Last We Met: At the time, the loss was the seventh in the last nine games for Providence, and the lopsided margin bombed them all the way down to #91 in the KenPom.com rankings after starting out the year at #60. The loss moved their record to 7-7 on the year and 1-2 in Big East play. Things have not gotten better for them, as PC is just 5-8 in the 13 games since New Year’s Eve. They did post a very impressive 75-62 win over that Villanova team that’s still hitting threes against Marquette right this second back on February 15th, but they turned around and thew that moment of positivity in the trash in their most recent game. The Friars’ trip to Washington, D.C., got real bad across halftime as Georgetown threw a 23-3 run at them. They were down 25 at that point, and the Hoyas ended up winning by 21, 93-72.
Tempo Free Fun: The Providence game falling on New Year’s Eve allows us a nice ability to take some snapshots of what Marquette men’s basketball has been doing since rolling straight over the Friars to end 2024.
Using the very popular and very user friendly BartTorvik.com data sorting feature:
New Year’s Day forward:
Overall: #61
Offense: #77
Defense: #60
From the Xavier loss forward:
Overall: #62
Offense: #86
Defense: #57
From the Connecticut loss forward:
Overall: #84
Offense: #88
Defense: #103
To draw contrast and comparison, here’s Providence’s overall ranks in each of those three data sets: #80, #83, #88.
I think it is easy enough to handwave the Connnecticut, St. John’s, and Creighton losses. “Oh, well, UConn hit a bunch of shots, that’s crazy, they’re a good team, whatever.” “St. John’s is good and getting better, it was on the road whatever.” “Creighton’s a tournament team and getting better, it was on the road, whatever.”
Doing that dismisses a pretty obvious fact that glares at you as you look at the three progressing data sets above: Marquette is getting worse and worse as the season goes along. The nature of the slide is even more stark when you realize that MU was playing like a top 20 team through the end of that Providence game on New Year’s Eve.
I think it’s easy enough to explain exactly what the hell is going on out there. If Kam Jones (26.5%) and David Joplin (28.4%) could hit the broad side of a barn from behind the three-point line against Big East teams, the whole thing would be going a lot differently. I’m not even saying if they were hitting 40% and 38% like last year. I’m talking about a totally passable and not particularly remarkable 33%. The two guys that we went into the season thinking “those are the guys that we expect to keep hitting shots” can not do diddly-squat right from long range across the last 16 games.
That’s the symptom. The diagnosis is a lot more complicated to explain, but I think the biggest problem is how those guys are getting those shots. Think about this: How many times over the past two seasons did you see Kam Jones take a handoff from Oso Ighodaro and rain in a three over Oso screening both his man and Kam’s man? A lot, right?
How many times have you seen Kam do that with Ben Gold? Is it zero? It feels like zero, right? How much of MU’s shooting woes can be attributed to “they’re not getting the same setups for shots as last season?” How much of the problem is that Jones is now the distributor on the floor and no one’s setting him up for easy open shots? The fact that Jones was shooting over 41% from distance before Big East play started might actually tell us more about MU’s lack of second and third and fourth options here. Not “guy who is second option,” but merely “what’s the second best action, what’s the third” and so on and so forth. It feels like there’s tape on how to cut off Marquette’s favorite things to do and they don’t have a second favorite. It’s like MU went to Baskin Robbins to get a scoop of mint chocolate chip, found out that they discontinued mint chocolate chip as a flavor, and now they have no idea what to do. You’re screaming in your head right now, “BASKIN ROBBINS HAS 31 FLAVORS, JUST PICK ONE!” but it’s just not happening. Instead, they’re asking for whatever’s hot and fresh.
And that’s not even the real problem.
It’s a basketball cliche to say “defense travels, meaning you can win games with your defense no matter if you’re at home or on the road. If you’ve got a system and a plan and the requisite effort, you can replicate it over and over again. You’d think that would be the case for Marquette. Even as they’ve gone 2-4 in the last six games, they’re still generating turnovers like crazy, going at a clip of 20.4% of possessions. That ranks #34 in the country……. and yet the defensive efficiency is sub-100. More than a fifth of opponent’s possessions have completely dead in the water, didn’t-get-a-shot-up trips down the floor….. and it has not mattered a lick for the Golden Eagles. Combine objectively awful rebounding — #309 — with yes, a little bit of fluky/luck three-point shooting from Connecticut and Villanova but also six straight games of giving up 38% behind the arc, and that’s how you get to where we are.
The question then becomes: What is head coach Shaka Smart going to do about it? Go listen to his post-game radio appearance after the Villanova game. He is not pleased, to say the least, with his starting five. Is he going to change something for Tuesday night? Here’s when the starters checked out for the last time in the second half on Friday:
Stevie Mitchell: 15:20
Kam Jones: 5:16
Chase Ross: 5:01
David Joplin: 9:53
Ben Gold: 14:23
Is a change coming at tipoff on Tuesday night? Is someone else getting a starting spot? Are the starters getting a short leash if they’re not up to par on what needs to be done? Shaka Smart said it early on in the preseason, this team isn’t good enough to just coast on by and relax and take things easy. They have to scrap and kick and claw and fight for everything they want this season. Lately, it seems like that’s not happening on either end of the floor.
Yes, I’m mostly skipping over talking about Providence here, because the opponent, at least for one game, doesn’t really matter. PC’s strengths and weaknesses aren’t what’s important for the Golden Eagles. Marquette’s not in danger of missing the NCAA tournament, not even close. What is in danger is having more than six games — four regular season, one Big East tournament, one NCAA tournament — left to play this year.
Marquette Last 10 Games: 5-5 and coming off a miserable loss at Villanova.
Providence Last 10 Games: 3-7 with losses in five of their last six games.
All Time Series: Marquette leads, 25-15.
Current Streak: Marquette has extended their winning streak against Providence to three straight.
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