The Golden Eagles led by 13 at the start of the second half, but ended up with an eight point loss because they couldn’t force a turnover.
Shaka Smart has said it all along. Not just that deflections and their close cousin turnovers are the life blood of what his Marquette basketball teams are doing on defense, but that the 2024-25 MU squad had to adopt a Goon Mentality in order to win this season. They have to be tough, each and every game, each and every possession, not just physically, but mentally as well.
And on Saturday night in southwest Ohio, that didn’t happen.
It happened in the first half as the #6 ranked Golden Eagles got out to an 18-5 lead just past the midway point and led a Dayton team that’s earning AP top 25 votes by 10 points at intermission. The Golden Eagles prompted seven turnovers from the Flyers, more than one-fifth of the possessions, and that helped MU’s entire deal for the first 20 minutes.
Kam Jones opened the scoring for the second half with a three, one of two in the game on five attempts for him, and that knocked that margin back to 13 points, 39-26. From there, it was pretty much all downhill for Marquette. UD scored the next seven to more than cut that lead in half right away. For a good long while, Marquette’s lead was bending but not breaking. Dayton kept scoring, kept beating MU on baseline inbounds for easy buckets, kept forcing MU to commit silly turnovers, but the lead stayed on MU’s side even if by only one point.
Right up until a Javon Bennett layup off a steal to tie the game at 53 with 7:43 to go.
Marquette would never lead again. Heck, the score would never even be tied again.
That Bennett layup was in the middle of an 8-0 run by the Flyers. Marquette never scored back-to-back buckets the rest of the way. Dayton didn’t do much to really run away with the game, but they kept getting points to stand next to each other, more than MU could do. It was still a game with less than two minutes to go as David Joplin got a bucket to go to make it 66-63 Dayton, but that would be MU’s last points of the game. Your final: Dayton 71, Marquette 63.
One of the reasons why Dayton scored 1.50 points per possession in the second half while closing the game on a 45-24 run? Not a single turnover in sight for the Flyers. Seven in the first half…. none in the second. The thing that Marquette’s defense is dependent on….. nowhere in sight.
On the other end? Where the Goon Mentality can show up in terms of making tough plays in tough spots in tough environments where the patrons are waving their hands in front of the TV cameras? Eight Marquette turnovers in the second half.
8-0 for the final 20 minutes. That’s not a recipe for a Marquette victory, not by a long shot.
How about some highlights, such as they are, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and CBS Sports Network?
Up Next: That was Marquette’s final non-conference game of the season, so it’s off to Big East play now. They’ll open up on Wednesday night at Fiserv Forum with a visit from the Butler Bulldogs. BU dropped their third straight game on Saturday, falling 83-74 to Wisconsin at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.