The Golden Eagles and the Red Storm tangle for the second time in seven days, this time with a spot in Saturday’s title game on the line.
2025 Big East Men’s Basketball Tournament
Semifinals
#1 St. John’s Red Storm (28-4, 18-2 Big East) vs #5 Marquette Golden Eagles (23-9, 13-7 Big East)
Date: Friday, March 14
Time: 5:30pm Central
Location: Madison Square Garden, New York, New York
Marquette Stats Leaders
Points: Kam Jones, 19.2 ppg
Rebounds: David Joplin, 5.4 rpg
Assists: Kam Jones, 6.0 apg
St. John’s Stats Leaders
Points: RJ Luis, 18.2 ppg
Rebounds: Zuby Ejiofor, 8.1 rpg
Assists: Kadary Richmond, 5.4 apg
KenPom.com Rankings
Marquette: #27
St. John’s: #14
Game Projection: This one goes in the books as a home game for the Red Storm, so they have a 64% chance of victory, with a predicted score of 73-69.
How They Got Here: St. John’s led off the Big East quarterfinals at Madison Square Garden with a 78-57 victory over #9 seed Butler. RJ Luis went for 20 points on 8-for-18 shooting in his first game since being named Big East Player of the Year, and he added seven rebounds, too. Kadary Richmond earned KenPom.com MVP honors for the game with 15 points, eight rebounds, and nine assists. The Johnnies jumped out to an 18-3 lead thanks to a 15-0 run, and a 17-3 run early in the second half took whatever drama was remaining — it was 39-31 when the run started — out of the building.
That left an awful lot of drama for Marquette’s quarterfinal game, as the Golden Eagles fell behind Xavier by a little bit in the first half and then by as many as 14 early in the second half. MU’s three-point shooting rose to their aid, connecting nine times on their final 15 attempts of the game, and some clutch free throw shooting handed the Golden Eagles an 89-87 victory over the Musketeers. Kam Jones was dynamite, getting 28 points, two rebounds, and five assists, while David Joplin chipped in a 14 point, 6 rebound effort. Stevie Mitchell scored a bit with 16 points, and his five steals went a long way toward determining the outcome.
Earlier This Season: St. John’s took both sides of the season series with Marquette. The front end was a 70-64 game at Madison Square Garden back on February 4th in a game where the Red Storm had an early lead and two fouls on Kam Jones. Still, Marquette led 55-54 with just over five minutes to play, so that one was clearly anyone’s ballgame down the stretch…… and St. John’s took it by not allowing another MU field goal.
The second meeting was just this past Saturday in the regular season finale for both teams. Marquette clearly had a chance to win it in regulation but couldn’t, and then it looked like they had forced double overtime before the Johnnies poked a rebound away from Chase Ross and Zuby Ejiofor flipped in a 3 foot floater for the buzzer beating victory.
Two bummer losses for Marquette to be sure, but neither contest tells you that the Red Storm are clearly better than the Golden Eagles, only that they won two close games.
Tempo Free Fun: Nothing has changed about the best way to beat St. John’s since last Saturday. They are not a good shooting team. Marquette held them to 5-for-23 from long range at Fiserv Forum, and that 22% isn’t that far off from their season average of 30.0% on three-pointers. Against Butler on Thursday, they got 5-for-9 three-point shooting from the combination of RJ Luis and Aaron Scott while the rest of the team went 2-for-11. You get the point.
What the Red Storm does well is grab misses and get a second chance. 43% of their misses in Milwaukee turned into a second chance, and that was after the Golden Eagles allowed STJ to get to 47% of their missed shots in MSG back on February 4th. Both of those numbers are a tremendous day at the office for the Red Storm, who are already one of the 10 best offensive rebounding teams in the country according to KenPom.com at 37.9% on the year.
They’re going to get their offensive rebounds. That’s not a question. The question is whether or not you can just keep them to their average. Marquette didn’t do that in either of the first two games, and they lost by six points and two points in overtime.
You will never convince me otherwise that getting a total of 4, maybe 5 defensive rebounds would have changed both outcomes.
Force them to take tough shots, get a body on Zuby Ejiofor when the ball gets in the air, grab it with two hands and secure it, advance to Saturday night for the third straight year. Easier said than done, but man, it really does not look more difficult than that.
Marquette Last 10 Games: 5-5, with three wins in the last five games and coming off a quarterfinal victory on Thursday.
St. John’s Last 10 Games: 9-1, with wins in their last seven games
All Time Series: Marquette leads, 29-18
Current Streak: The Red Storm swept the season series to give them two straight wins against the Golden Eagles.
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