Just don’t ask questions about the two-point shooting, I guess.
It’s been reasonable to question the defensive fortitude of Marquette men’s basketball over the past several games. For about eight minutes on Tuesday night at Fiserv Forum, it was reasonable to say “hey, I don’t particularly care for how this is going on that end of the floor” yet again. With 12:25 left in the first half, Stevie Mitchell got whistled for slapping Jayden Pierre on the arm as he flailed a three-pointer at the rim as the shot clock wound down — he absolutely did make contact, whether it was worth calling and the timing of said whistle relative to the ball leaving Pierre’s hands is up for debate — and all three free throws went through for a 17-15 Providence lead.
Nothing wrong with a bit of back and forth basketball, of course, but MU just didn’t quite seem to have it on defense after starting the game with two stops.
Thus, it was obviously time for MU to record five straight stops — just short of a skunk unfortunately — and rattle off 12 straight points on the other end as well. 27-17 Marquette, and then another four straight stops gave the Golden Eagles the chance to advance the margin to 36-21.
That’s a 21-4 run. Along the way, Providence shot 1-for-6 from the field and committed four turnovers.
This is about where PC head coach Kim English realized he was out of answers and put in Nilavan Jotham Daniels. This was his sixth appearance of the season, and the first since tying his season high in minutes with four back on February 12th against Xavier. Of course he immediately hit his first two shots of the game and caused Shaka Smart to call timeout to ask someone on his bench if anyone had any idea who this guy was as the lead slashed down to just nine points, 39-30.
A David Joplin three on MU’s last possession of the half had the Golden Eagles up 11 at intermission, and when you consider that they were up 15 with four-ish minutes to go, that’s not exactly the best way to go into the locker room. Starting out the second half with four straight stops to get to five in a row after PC’s final possession of the first half, well, that’s a good way to come out of the break.
The lead got up to 16, and then Providence started putting some stops together of their own. They got it to 50-39, and there was a certain vibe that Marquette did kind of need to put the hammer down and end this. That’s what we got with an 18-3 run as the Golden Eagles strung together eight straight stops on defense. 1-for-9 from the field for the Friars, four turnovers. Marquette up 26, 7:27 to go. Mathematically speaking, the game was over. Knock three points off the lead for a ball in the air at the horn, square that new number, divide by 60 seconds in a minute, anything shorter than that, the lead’s safe. In this case: 8.82 or 8:49 on the clock. We’re under that, the lead’s safe.
Marquette drove that point home, moving the lead to as high as 31 with 2:25 to go, and it’s quite the note that it came on the coast-to-coast layup through contact by Ben Gold. That bucket was the last points in the game before the walk-ons came in, and yep, I’m going there: Providence head coach Kim English is not a cool dude. With under a minute to go, English had a lineup on the floor that included one of his starters and two guys that played more than 15 minutes in this game. They kicked up the high pressure defense on the walk-ons, with Marquette up 29, and turned it into a Rich Barron dunk. And then they did it again, and when Ryan Mela shoved Casey O’Malley to the ground as O’Malley lost the ball out of bounds, referee Nathan Farrell hit Mela with a technical foul.
I don’t 100% know what happened, but I presume that 1) Kim English got mad about that, 2) Shaka Smart told him “I dunno, maybe tell your guys to chill after I put my walkons in up 30,” and 3) We officially had a fracas brewing. I’ll tell you this much: I did the “oh, there’s scrappin’?” stand up in my seat in Section 119 and got the “please don’t go over there” hand on my arm from my wife. Along the way, the PC bench got hit with a technical foul as well — I’m told it was assistant coach Dennis Felton? — and O’Malley went 3-for-4 at the line.
The postgame handshake between Smart and English was relatively calm, which is kind of funny given the level of emotion I was easily reading off of English during the not-fracas.
Final score: Marquette 82, Providence 52. Marquette scored 1.21 points per trip and held the Friars to just 0.76, including a microscopic 0.54 per possession in the second half. How did Marquette do this? Mostly by shooting 41.5% from behind the arc….. and doing that while setting a KenPom.com era record for highest three-point attempt rate. MU fired off a team record 41 of their 61 field goal attempts in this game from behind the arc, and that 67.2% rate surpasses the old record……. set earlier this season against Central Michigan.
Kam Jones and Ben Gold led the Golden Eagles in scoring here with both men getting to 17 points. Jones led in assists with seven, while Gold tied with David Joplin for the team high in rebounds with six. Stevie Mitchell was the only other player to hit double digits in points as he tallied 14. Those three guys combined to shoot 11-for-22 from behind the arc. Nicely done.
How about some highlights — the Ben Gold coast-to-coast layup is the last thing — courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Fox Sports?
Up Next: Marquette looked quite different than they did back on Friday in their loss at Villanova, so obviously the next test is taking the show back out on the road and doing it again. On Saturday night, Marquette will be in the nation’s capital for a contest against Georgetown. Tipoff is set for 7pm Central, and you will need a Peacock subscription to watch. The Hoyas will visit UConn on Wednesday night before returning home to wait for the Golden Eagles.