The Golden Eagles invited too many issues to their regular season finale, and that set up the Red Storm to literally steal away a win.
For a moment, it looked like Marquette was poised to break Saturday’s regular season finale against #6 St. John’s wide open. A 6-0 burst across a little less than two minutes of game time left the #20 ranked Golden Eagles up 23-15 with 8:26 to go in the first half. The Golden Eagles were flying around on both ends of the court, things were rolling along, they were getting their feet under them, whatever metaphor you want to use.
And then the under 8 timeout popped up after St. John’s knocked a Marquette miss out of bounds, and then St. John’s scored eight straight out of the break, all in about 80 seconds. Tied up at 23.
Marquette went into halftime down 36-35, which isn’t a problem other than that eight point lead that disappeared thing. Most of the second half was a back and forth contest, very competitive, very fun, maybe more physical than you like, but fine. STJ scored six points around two free throws from Ben Gold, and with 6:18 to play, the Red Storm was up six, their largest lead of the game.
Quite obviously, a problem for Marquette.
David Joplin scored on consecutive possessions to wipe out two-thirds of that margin right away, so we went right back to competitive basketball, and then with 4:41 to go, Jop cashed a three to tie the game up at 69-all. A minute later, MU hurried to the other end after a St. John’s miss, and Kam Jones scored to put Marquette up, 71-69.
The Johnnies answered, but Kam Jones is still Kam Jones, and he scored out of a timeout to make it 74-73 with 40 seconds left. Zuby Eijofor lost his handle driving on Gold on the other end in a very funny sight with the ball seemingly ticketed for the Marquette pep band, and MU was inbounding up one with 28 seconds left.
Stevie Mitchell to the line.
He split his two shots, MU by two, 22 seconds left.
And MU just couldn’t stop RJ Luis.
Overtime.
St. John’s went up 81-77 in the first half of the extra session, but the Golden Eagles clawed their way back in. Two free throws for Joplin. A banked in three from Chase Ross, which got immediately answered by a rainbow corner three from Luis. Johnnies by two.
Ross came up limping on a missed attempt in the lane, St. John’s had to re-inbound after the refs blew it dead, THE RED STORM GOT WHISTLED FOR A FIVE SECOND INBOUND CALL, and Kam Jones is The Man, tying it at 84 with 26 seconds left. Get a stop, maybe get off a prayer, otherwise go to double overtime.
They got the stop.
At least officially, in the scorebook.
St John’s misses a three to win but steals it back and beats the buzzer
Credit to Kadary Richmond, Simeon Wilcher, and Zuby Eijofor for the trio of things that needed to happen to get the ball from Chase Ross after the rebound. All of them needed to go 100% right, and they did, and the road team won.
One Problem Too Many, like the title says at the top, and I didn’t even mention the glaring one, because it doesn’t really fit into the story here naturally. St. John’s is a terrific offensive rebounding team. They rank ninth in the country according to KenPom.com at it. Legitimately great. If you want to beat them, you have to hold them to their 38% rate average or lower if you want to beat them.
19 second chances for the Red Storm here on 44 possible rebounds.
43.2%.
You can’t beat a top 10 team without at least making them merely average at the thing they’re legitimately great at doing. Marquette didn’t do that, St. John’s got 27 second chance points, and ta-da, you see the problem.
How about some highlights, such as they are, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Fox Sports?
Up Next: We know Marquette’s next game will be in the Big East tournament, and we know they’re getting a bye to the quarterfinals. With Connecticut beating Seton Hall, that means the Huskies will finish ahead of Marquette, and send the Golden Eagles to the 4/5 game. It’s still up in the air as to which seed MU will be, but it will definitely be Xavier on the other side, no matter what happens in their game against Providence that’s still underway. The 4/5 game will be at 1:30pm Central time on Thursday, March 13, and Peacock will have the streaming broadcast.