The Golden Eagles had to rally to win after leading by 15 with seven minutes left, but a win’s a win…..
Okay, look.
I was at the McGuire Center for this game, watching the entirety of it on my iPad, since Marquette men’s basketball tipped off on the road against Xavier an hour before the women’s basketball game started. This means that I watched the first half of Marquette/Xavier on mute, which might have not been the worst way to go about things, as neither team looked particularly great on offense. For example, no one scored at all for the final 2:29 of of the half, and so the two teams went to intermission with Marquette holding a 27-22 lead. Neither side got to an effective field goal percentage of even 45% in the first 20 minutes, and the two teams split 13 turnovers as evenly as you can, 7-6 with MU getting the extra giveaway.
Halftime lined up pretty perfectly with the anthem and starting lineups, so I missed nothing, and the second half started off mostly the way that the first half was going. 12 total points scored in the first four minutes, the two sides alternating scores….. but the last bucket before the 16:00 mark was a David Joplin layup that started off a brief Jop flurry. He got fouled shooting a three a bit over a minute later, and that’s a 6-0 MU run just from Joplin alone. Marquette up nine.
Xavier got a three from Marcus Foster, one of six long range makes for the Musketeers on the day and one of three from Foster himself, and now it was Stevie Mitchell’s turn. Scored in the paint, got fouled in transition, four straight, Marquette up 10.
Foster scored inside, but Marquette answered with layups from Joplin and Kam Jones. 4-0, not a lot, but now the lead’s 12 and there’s 12:30 to play.
This is about at the point of the game where every time I looked at the iPad, Marquette was up more than 10 points and so, naturally, I was kind of more paying attention to the live women’s basketball game in front of me. Hey, Jop hit a three, up 13? Great. Kam scored in transition, up 15 now? Great.
I was watching closely when Ben Gold uncorked a three-pointer with 7:45 to go, on a bucket that I was sure was going in before he even caught the ball in the first place because it was such a nice pass from Damarius Owens, lead’s 15 again. Joplin scored with 6:09 to go, and the lead was 13. Sure. No problem, just gotta trade buckets with Xavier, right?
That did NOT happen, as Xavier scored 14 straight over the next nearly four minutes. Yes, that means the entire lead was gone now, as a Jerome Hunter layup put Xavier ahead, 64-63, with 2:17 to play. One of the reasons that Marquette pushed out and away from Xavier up to the six minutes mark? Six Musketeer turnovers, and Marquette turned those six into eight points. That’s a pretty good return on your investment. During the 14-0 run? As you could expect, no Xavier turnovers. For a brief moment there, the Musketeers solved whatever the MU defense was doing to them, or maybe, just slightly, MU’s defense started focusing on getting a stop instead of gambling for steals, and that didn’t quite work out the way anyone wanted.
Marquette immediately answered with a bucket from Kam Jones in the paint, and then guess what? The other two Xavier turnovers of the half, on back-to-back possessions, and yep, Marquette scored on both. Eight turnovers, 12 points. Marquette up 69-64, with 35 seconds left. And then Marquette’s defense went to sleep, apparently? Or they decided the best idea was to start giving Xavier wideopen layups because at least that’s not a trio of 40% three-point shooters launching three point bombs at their five point lead? Maybe? That’s at least a better option then “yeah, we just didn’t want to bother rotating to help.”
IN ANY CASE, Ryan Conwell scored, Chase Ross missed a front end after a foul, and then Dayvion McKnight went straight to the rim and made it a one point game with 11 seconds left. Not great! But Kam Jones hit his freebies to make it a three point game, Shaka Smart called timeout to prep his defense, I presumed MU would foul at half court with less than 10 seconds left, THEY DID NOT DO THAT, and Conwell went right to the rim and scored. One point game, four seconds left.
Kam missed the front end, made the second, and Xavier had three seconds to get off any shot in the world to tie or win. Ryan Conwell flies up the court…… and fell on his face.
Again, I was watching on mute. I did not know what happened. But Fox shifted the graphic from 00.0 remaining to Final, Marquette high fived, and left the court. Game over? Apparently?
And they showed the replay. Here’s what I saw: Ryan Conwell drove straight at a stationary Chase Ross, who moved out of the way at the last possible second to avoid contact with Conwell in an effort to just slow him down and make the last second shot as bad as possible. In the process of all of this, Conwell leapt-ish over Ross’ leg as he moved out of the way, and that alteration in his motion caused Conwell to fall down, without ever making contact with Ross.
In my book, clean as a sheet perfect refereeing on a bang-bang play. If you saw something different than that, I’m happy to hear what you saw in the comments, but I saw no contact to call.
Kam Jones led Marquette with 20 points here, but it took him 20 shots to get there, and he missed all three of his long range attempts. 8 assists and four rebounds goes a long way towards making up for that, though. David Joplin and Ben Gold tied for the team high in rebounds with five while contributing 19 and 11 points respectively.
How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Fox Sports?
Up Next: Some time off! The Golden Eagles won’t play again until they head out east to face Providence on New Year’s Eve. Tipoff on that one is scheduled for 5pm Central, and FS1 will have the broadcast. The Friars have lost six of their last eight games, including coughing up a 38-22 first half lead to lose 72-70 at the buzzer to St. John’s at home on Friday night.
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