The Golden Eagles never let the Wildcats get back into the game after an early run.
Going into Friday night’s home contest against Villanova, it seemed that Marquette’s pathway to victory depended on figuring out how to slow down Eric Dixon, the top scorer in the entire country. His 24.9 points per game powered the VU offense to the #12 spot in the KenPom.com efficiency ratings, so it was an obvious situation of “make Dixon inefficient, break Villanova’s offense.”
I can’t say that game plan was a 100% success in #10 Marquette’s 87-74 victory for a couple of reasons, but I can’t say it didn’t work, either. For nearly 37 minutes, Marquette — and largely speaking David Joplin — frustrated Dixon into 4-for-11 shooting, which included just 2-for-6 shooting inside the arc for the 6’8”, 260 pound forward. He came nowhere close to his season average, as he tacked on eight of his 18 points with three minutes and change left to go….. which you could also define as “right after Marquette took a 76-61 lead, their largest lead of the game.”
Held Dixon to just 10 points in the competitive portion of the basketball game? Great work all around. Just can’t say that it was a 100% success, because that lead was still floating around in the single digits for a lot of the first and second halves, including right after a Jordan Longino layup with 7:15 to play. The score was 63-55 at that point, and a big reason why that was the case with Dixon stuck in neutral at best was Longino. He finished with a game high 27 points, as he tacked on a bunch of points in a foul-heavy second half. It’s hard to say that his 8-for-19 shooting night was great, but it was arguably the best thing going for the Wildcats for the majority of the game. Marquette was even letting him have 17 foot mid-range one-legged jumpers, as I suspect the entire team watched him rise up for those shots and could hear Nevada Smith hollering in their heads that it’s a bad shot, and go ahead, let him shoot bad shots all night.
And while the game was competitive for much of the 40 minutes, it also never felt Marquette was struggling to do anything. Maybe to get stops in the second half as the Wildcats ended up scoring 1.23 points per possession after intermission, but Villanova’s defense was definitely not up to the task of playing complimentary basketball. The Golden Eagles could pretty much do whatever they wanted on the offensive end for the entirety of this game, putting up 1.20 points per trip in the first half and a very crazy 1.31 PPP after halftime.
Is that 1.31 maaaaaaaybe a little elevated by the Golden Eagles scoring nine points at the free throw line in the final 2:10 as Villanova head coach Kyle Neptune got a weird idea in his head that it was a good play to start fouling to extend the game while down ELEVEN? Yeah, maybe. But it doesn’t take away from the point that Marquette had an answer for Villanova every single time that they needed one in this game. That wasn’t terrifically often, as MU was usually up a possession or two, so they had the breathing space. but if it started to inch back together, MU made a play to stop it from getting closer.
Stevie Mitchell is your top Marquette scorer here, getting 21 points on 7-for-10 shooting, possibly just to taunt Eric Dixon’s inefficiency in this game, and that includes a sick pull up three in transition after he batted a VU outlet pass out of the air. Kam Jones got to 16 points, and Chase Ross added 18, including a big pair of three-pointers in the second half that helped keep Villanova on the outside of the fence that the Golden Eagles were building. Ben Gold was a physical presence, getting to nine rebounds with more than a few of the “I’m gonna rip this away from everyone else” variety. Kam Jones led with five assists, while Stevie Mitchell had a game high three steals.
How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Fox Sports?
Up Next: Marquette returns to action on Tuesday night when they venture down to Indianapolis to visit Butler. Tipoff is set for 7:30pm Central, and FS1 will have the broadcast. The Bulldogs have lost 10 of their last 11 games heading into a Saturday contest at home against DePaul before the Golden Eagles roll into town.