The Golden Eagles meet up with the Musketeers in Madison Square Garden while looking to snap a two game skid.
2025 Big East Men’s Basketball Tournament
Quarterfinals
#4 Xavier Musketeers (21-10, 13-7 Big East) vs #5 Marquette Golden Eagles (22-9, 13-7 Big East)
Date: Thursday, March 13, 2025
Time: 1:30pm Central, or approximately 30 minutes after the conclusion of the previous quarterfinal game.
Location: Madison Square Garden, New York, New York
Marquette Stats Leaders
Points: Kam Jones, 18.9 ppg
Rebounds: David Joplin, 5.4 rpg
Assists: Kam Jones, 6.1 apg
Xavier Stats Leaders
Points: Zach Freemantle, 17.4 ppg
Rebounds: Zach Freemantle, 7.1 rpg
Assists: Dayvion McKnight, 4.3 apg
KenPom.com Rankings
Marquette: #26
Xavier: #42
Game Projection: Marquette has a 62% chance of victory, with a predicted score of 75-71.
Earlier This Season: These two teams played a pair of games with wild changes down the stretch that resulted in each team winning on the road.
On December 21, Marquette had a 27-22 lead at intermission even though both teams went cold for the final two minutes of the half. That lead ballooned to 61-46 with seven minutes to go and it certainly seemed like the Golden Eagles were going to be able to just play it even the rest of the way and leave with a relatively easy road win in the Big East.
NOT SO FAST, MY FRIEND. Xavier threw an 18-2 run, including 14 straight, at the Golden Eagles to make it 64-63 with just over two minutes left. MU got two turnovers out of the Musketeers on their way to 14 in the game to give them an edge, and then Marquette either started giving up layups to stop threes or got beat repeatedly. In any case, it all came down to Kam Jones splitting a pair of free throws to give XU a chance to tie or win with three seconds left…… and Ryan Conwell fell down on his way up the court as Chase Ross dodged out of his way. At least that’s how it looked to me and that’s what the refs called, too.
The rematch was in Milwaukee on January 18th, and the tone of the game was kind of the same: The road team took a gigantic lead, there was a furious comeback, and the home team never got a shot off to tie or win at the end. In this case, it was Xavier using a 10-2 run coming out of the locker room to go up 45-26 with about 15 minutes to go and Marquette going on a 12-2 run to get the thing within four with four minutes left. Xavier had spent most of the game collapsing on the lane as hard as possible to make things miserable for MU as they went to the rack, and that generated a bunch of MU’s 13 turnovers in the game…… but then they just stopped doing that in the second half, maybe because they were up to seven fouls and felt the refs were going to start calling everything and they could maybe just gut it out with the lead.
That is kind of what they did, and Marquette got a chance to tie or win with eight seconds to play after generating a tieup. Fiserv Forum was ready to explode on a bucket, but the guys on the floor just kept looking for a better shot, including Stevie Mitchell passing on at least two decent chances to get a shot up with time remaining to chase a rebound, and the ball never went in the air at all.
Since Last We Met: After that win moved Xavier to 4-4 in Big East play after a 1-4 start, they spent the next five games looking like they really didn’t want to take a jump forward towards the NCAA tournament. They fell to St. John’s in overtime after leading by 10 at the half, they followed up a home win over UConn with a nine point road loss at Creighton, which isn’t a problem, but the 12 point road loss to Villanova two games later absolutely was.
14-10, 6-7 in the league. #55 in the NET, most of their chances for quality wins over NCAA tournament teams in the rear view mirror.
To Xavier’s credit: They haven’t lost since. Seven straight wins, including a sweep of Butler and a 22 point stomping of Creighton at Cintas Center that featured the Musketeers responding to a 16-2 run that cut the margin to eight by throwing 17-2 right back at the Bluejays.
It’s a real study of “how does the order you play the games matter?” Marquette was 9-1 in Big East play with three games against teams that are actual NCAA tourney contenders right now. Xavier’s 8-1 in their last nine with just one game against NCAA tourney contenders. Both teams had great hot streaks in conference play, but Xavier is on their run right now, while Marquette’s came back in December and January.
It’s also a study of non-conference scheduling and success against said schedule. Xavier went 0-2 in two Quad 1 non-con games with their best non-league win going as #69 Wake Forest. This means that 13-7 in the Big East projects them as Last Four In right now and they probably need to beat Marquette to seal up their NCAA bid. Marquette? 4-2 against Q1 on the non-conference slate, with the best win as #11 Maryland, and on the road, too. 13-7 in the BE has the Golden Eagles as a lock for the NCAA field, no matter what happens on Thursday.
Tempo Free Fun: I know I was kind of dismissive of the run that Xavier is on right now while making the point that the X-Men’s schedule has been the back end of the Big East while Marquette has been going through a wheat thresher lately. But the fact of the matter is that Xavier’s been playing pretty good to great basketball and Marquette’s been kind of boneheaded over these exact same timeframes.
Since February 1, according to the BartTorvik.com Data Filtering:
Record
Marquette: 4-6
Xavier: 8-1
National Overall T-Rank
Marquette: #44
Xavier: #26
Offensive Efficiency
Marquette: #55
Xavier: #39
Defensive Efficiency
Marquette: #53
Xavier: #22
Those kinds of numbers — adjusted for opponent strength, by the way! — are enough to flip the Torvik projection for Thursday’s game from Marquette wins 73-73 based on full season numbers to Xavier wins, 76-72. This is “Xavier is playing like an obvious NCAA tourney team against lesser teams” and “Marquette is playing like a bubble team against NCAA tournament teams.” That’s how it goes sometimes, sure, but it still means that Xavier is playing better than Marquette, too.
If we strip that away and just look at what did and did not work against Xavier the first two times this season, the first thing that pops out at you is the turnovers. Facts are facts: Marquette won the game when they won the turnover battle and vice versa. 14 vs 10 in turnovers made the difference in a two point win, 11 vs 13 in turnovers made the difference in a two point loss.
Naturally, you say, “well, Marquette’s a good team at forcing turnovers and holding onto the ball as well, that was a one off where Xavier devoted themselves to creating problems in the paint.” Sure, I concede your point, but the fact of the matter is that Marquette has only forced a turnover rate north of 21% in one of their last nine games — the 30 point win over Providence — and they’ve only been over 20% three times. For whatever reason, the Golden Eagles haven’t been prompting turnovers as much lately. When they force misses — four games with opponents scoring less than 1.03 points per possession — they win. When they don’t — five games north of 1.03, four of them north of 1.10 — they lose.
And so, we turn our attention to how Xavier shot the ball. In Cincinnati, they connected on 55% of their two-point attempts — Jerome Hunter in particular went 6-for-8 — but the Musketeers connected on just 32% of their three-pointers. Marcus Foster went 3-for-7 though, so it wasn’t a perfect day at the office.
When the series shifted to Milwaukee…… Xavier got worse. 53% on twos, although Dailyn Swain and Zach Freemantle — who did not play in the first meeting — combined to shooting 11-for-22. Three-point shooting was an abject nightmare for the Musketeers/tremendous boon to the Golden Eagles, as none of the visitors connected twice from long range on their way to shooting 2-for-17 (12%). Ryan Conwell in particular was awful, missing all eight of his attempts even though he’s a 41% shooter overall this season and hit for 38% against Big East foes.
It seems unlikely that both teams will shoot the ball as poorly for 40 minutes as they did in the second contest. That one ended up at 59-57 in a 67 possession game with neither team cracking 0.90 points per possession. Something’s going to go differently this time around, and the goal for the Golden Eagles is to be the team that takes advantage of whatever it is that’s going differently.
If Marquette can find an offensive game plan that avoids the collapsing Xavier defense again and thus the sloppiness and confusion that resulted from it, that’s a path to victory. The problem is that Xavier certainly looks like a team where you should attack the rim. 6’9”, 227 pound Zach Freemantle is their largest rotation player with 6’11” John Hugley usually playing less than 10 minutes a game and a total of just eight against MU this season. Getting into the paint definitely seems like the right move, but that failed them at Fiserv. There has to be a point to getting into the paint, not just getting in there to be a problem. Get a paint touch to get a cut to the rim, a quick kickout for a three, a kickout to a secondary drive from the wing. These are all things that we’ve seen from Marquette in the past, so I’m not asking for a reinvention of the wheel. Just smart, creative, sharing basketball.
Marquette Last 10 Games: 4-6, with losses in each of their last two games.
Xavier Last 10 Games: 8-2 and riding a seven game winning streak.
All Time Series: Marquette leads, 60-28.
Current Streak: Xavier’s nailbiter win in Milwaukee earlier this season snapped a five game Marquette winning streak in this series.
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