Rally & Advance: #5 Marquette 89, #4 Xavier 87

The Golden Eagles trailed by 14 early in the second half and came roaring back to advance to the Big East semifinals for the third straight year.

For the first time in three tries this season, the team that had a big lead in a Marquette/Xavier game lost.

Marquette held on to win in Cincinnati back in late December, and then it was Xavier’s turn to cut it close when the season series moved to Milwaukee in mid-January. On Thursday afternoon at Madison Square Garden, the streak broke, and fortunately (or unfortunately, given that they were trailing in the first place?) and YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles came roaring back from down 14 with 17 minutes to play in the second of four Big East tournament quarterfinal games.

Final score: #5 seed Marquette 89, #4 seed Xavier 87, and that’s only because of a pointless and undefended Ryan Conwell three-pointer at the buzzer.

Marquette opened up the game with three-pointers for their first two buckets, one from David Joplin (contested, of course) and one from Stevie Mitchell. They wouldn’t hit a three again until there was less than six minutes left in the first half, and in the meantime, Xavier had led by as many as nine points after a 7-0 run. Marquette’s offense was doing a lot of breaking up Xavier runs, so you have stuff like 8-2 Xavier and 12-6 Xavier as the first half went along. A three-pointer with 2:41 to go from Dante Maddox got the X-Men up double digits for the first time, and a triple in transition from Conwell punched the margin up to 12, the largest of the game with 1:31 left before intermission.

Kam Jones got a layup to go for the final bucket of the half, but that wasn’t much solace after the Musketeers put up an effective field goal percentage of over 65% in the first 20 minutes. Reports from in the building had Marquette at just 12 deflections in the first half, and if the goal is to get more than 32 in the game, well, you can do the easy math and see how poorly things were going on the defensive end.

It got worse.

7-3 Xavier in the first 2:30 of the second stanza, and boom: There’s your 14 point lead for the Musketeers in a game that they kiiiiiiiiiiiinda really needed to win to firm up their NCAA tournament hopes.

And that’s when Marquette’s three-point shooting caught fire. The Golden Eagles were tolerable behind the arc at Madison Square Garden in the first half, hitting 5-of-15 attempts. That’s passable, no reason to complain, but they did miss their first three attempts of the second half. 5-for-18? Not Great, Bob!

But with 16:59 to play, Kam Jones uncorked one of his five made triples in this game, and 40 seconds later, Chase Ross added one, and 25 seconds after that, Stevie Mitchell got in the action. That’s how you cut a lead down to just seven.

Royce Parham, down 5, 13:56 to go.

Royce Parham, triggering a 10-0 Marquette run, capped by — of course — a three from Jones, and Marquette’s now up one, 63-62, 10:26 to go. 15 point swing in just over seven minutes.

Xavier got back up four, they obviously weren’t going to go away with their postseason maybe in the balance, but a three from Jones got it back in MU’s favor, and another from David Joplin got the margin to four with 4:14 to go.

Again Xavier came back, tying it on a layup from Conwell, who was on a mission in this one. He finished with 38 points on 13-for-18 shooting, including an absurd 7-for-11 from long range. Time started working against Xavier here. Kam Jones answered a three from Conwell, and Zach Freemantle coughed it up to give MU the ball with under a minute to go while up 1.

This is where my son thought Xavier should start fouling. I thought he was crazy…. until he pointed out that Xavier had fouled just three times in the second half. This becomes important in a moment, but not before Joplin hit the most David Joplin “oops, all splashes” scramble three-pointer that you’ve ever seen.

This clip is cutting off the “oh, shoot, Marquette’s losing possession of this ball, that’s bad” scramble that happened in the two seconds previous. You can see Kam Jones getting back to his feet as the end result of it. As you can see, Jop kind of had to put it up because the shot clock was trickling away…. but the good part of this clip is that it grabbed his block on Dayvion McKnight on the other end. Weird note: The live stats gave that to Ben Gold, but that’s definitely Joplin shooting the ball into the 7th row.

Dailyn Swain scored for the Musketeers on the ensuing inbound, but now it’s a 2 point game with 16 seconds left. Remember that Xavier foul situation? Yep. It took until 10 seconds left in the game before Marquette started shooting free throws. Gold hit the front end, missed the back, and MU wisely fouled as Xavier reached halfcourt.

Specifically: Chase Ross fouled Ryan Conwell at halfcourt, a call that Xavier fans wish had been made in the game in Cintas Center in December.

Stevie Mitchell sank a pair — somewhat perilously, not clean at all — but that’s MU by three. Re-foul at mid-court, Conwell misses, Xavier’s controllers turn off as Ross rebounds, boom, MU wins.

Marquette shot 9-for-18 on threes in the second half. That got them to an effective field goal percentage of 75.8% in the final 20 minutes and had them scoring 1.47 points per trip down the floor. The defense was still not great in the second half, giving up 1.14 per possession, but hey: When you’re at nearly a point and a half, you can make a mistake here and there on the defensive end, I guess.

Kam Jones had one of his best games of the season, going for 28 points on 11-for-22 shooting, and adding two rebounds, a steal, and a team high five assists. Chase Ross (16), Stevie Mitchell (16) and David Joplin (14) all joined him in double digit town. Joplin’s six rebounds led the way there, while Mitchell recorded a game high five steals — Xavier finished the game with zero steals — to help generate some stops along the way.

How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Peacock?

Up Next: Can I interest you in a third straight Big East tournament semifinals appearance for the Golden Eagles? Worth noting: Shaka Smart has been to three semifinals in four seasons….. matching Marquette’s previous total since 2006 combined. 2008, 2010, and 2019. In any case, they’ll get top seeded St. John’s on Friday night after the Red Storm beat Butler 78-57 in the first quarterfinal game of the day. Tipoff is set for 5:30pm Central time, and Fox will carry the broadcast.

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