No other way to describe leading by 15 in the first half and losing by 16 in the Big East semifinals
For seven and a half precious minutes at Madison Square Garden on Friday night in the Big East semifinals, everything was going right for Marquette men’s basketball. The Golden Eagles hit four three-pointers, including three from Kam Jones as he tallied up 12 points and Marquette exploded out to a 24-9 lead against top seeded and #6 in the country St. John’s.
And then they got outscored 70-39 the rest of the way.
St. John’s immediately threw a 19-5 run at Marquette to buzz the lead alllllllll the way down to just one, and a few minutes later, back-to-back buckets from Zuby Ejiofor gave the Johnnies their first lead of the game, 35-33.
Marquette went into halftime up 37-35, which was good news. The bad news was that the Golden Eagles turned the ball over seven times after getting out to that big lead, in what was a very un-Marquette type of performance. That kind of thing continued in the second half, as they coughed it up eight more times.
That was down the line, though. The opening of the second half was a back-and-forth segment worthy of the Big East semifinals. A five point St. John’s possession thanks to a three-pointer from Aaron Scott and two free throws due to a flagrant foul by Chase Ross got the Red Storm out in front for what would turn out to be for good, and then a little while later, the home team put up nine straight to go up 10. The Golden Eagles responded to slash the margin to just four with 9:50 to play, but they would go on to tally up just four more field goals the rest of the way as the Johnnies flirted with punching the margin way past 20 for a little bit there.
The wild part? Marquette actually pulled off the thing I thought was the key to victory in the preview. Marquette held St. John’s to six offensive rebounds in the first half and five in the second. That’s 11 second chances for the Red Storm on 44 possibilities, and 25% is waaaaaay short of their 37.9% average coming into Friday night.
But the turnovers for the Golden Eagles — 21.8%, well over their 13.5% on the season — and a lack of quality shooting to overpower the always poor shooting Red Storm — Marquette went 1-for-12 on three-pointers in the second half — spelled doom on this particular night.
How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Fox Sports?
Up Next: For now, nothing. Well, just no scheduled games. The next thing on the calendar is Selection Sunday for the NCAA tournament. Marquette is safely in the field, there’s no doubt about that. They aren’t going to be seeded as highly as we would have hoped on, say, the last day of January, but that’s a different issue. We know MU will hear their name called and will get at least one more game this year, and for now, we wait to find out what that will be.