STORRS, Conn. — At halftime, Marquette men’s basketball looked to be proving everyone, including the oddsmakers, wrong.
It was a sloppy 20 minutes, and the UConn Huskies did not look like the No. 4 ranked team they are, but the Golden Eagles trailed by only eight points.
Overcoming 11-for-34 shooting, eight turnovers and fouls galore by winning the rebounding battle — including eight on the offensive glass — and avoiding the prolonged scoring droughts that have killed winning chances in games past, Marquette went into the locker room with something to be proud of.
“With where our team is right now, a lot of it is trying to build belief in small segments,” Golden Eagles head coach Shaka Smart said. “We don’t even need to talk about the whole game. Just win this next round. Whether it’s two minutes, four minutes, whatever it may be.”
There were more than enough belief-building segments to choose from in the first half. But then UConn (14-1, 4-0 Big East) started UConn-ing, and Marquette (5-10, 0-4) started Marquette-ing, and the Golden Eagles left Gampel Pavilion having lost 73-57.
“The difference in the game today was just that they continued to attack,” Smart said. “They were more relentless than us.
“I thought there were a lot of possessions where we defended them well, but they stayed with it. They kept attacking. They kept battling.”
After over five minutes of second half basketball, Marquette had only four points. It went 1-of-6 from the field, including three missed 3-pointers. It did not score for the first two minutes, finally getting on the board at the 17:27 mark thanks to Chase Ross. It allowed the Huskies to extend their advantage to 52-33 with an 8-0 run, shooting 5-for-10.
It moved the scoreboard from 37-29 at the start of the period to 52-33 with 13 minutes remaining. Minutes later, UConn achieved its largest advantage — for the first of two times — with a 63-40 lead, and Marquette’s once slim chances of winning became microscopic at best.
“We had (the Huskies’) lead at five with less than two minutes left in the first half,” Smart said. “Coming out of halftime, I thought UConn did a good job of playing with force. And we did not stand up to them enough.
“And then, on our offensive end, there’s too many single actions. There’s got to be multiple actions against a team like that. I actually think when we played through multiple actions we got pretty good looks.”
One of the biggest proponents of why Marquette had so many single action possessions was Nigel James Jr. The first year point guard led the Golden Eagles with 15 points, but they came with the caveat of an inefficient 5-for-18 shooting clip. Many a trip down the floor for James Jr. ended with him trying to put points on the board alone by whatever means necessary, as teammates stood idly by.
“I like his aggressiveness,” Smart said. “There’s certain plays we’ll certainly watch and look at what we can learn and do better. But he cares. He’s got an unbelievable passion. But absolutely, there were plays where we got to move it to another side and get to another action.”
Chase Ross was the only other Golden Eagle score double-digits (11 points). As a team, Marquette went 20-for-62 overall and 5-of-24 (20.8%) from beyond the arc, making only 9 of their 28 attempts in the second half.
UConn had three double-digits scorers, led by Ball (17), who was trailed by Silas Demery Jr. (14) and Tarris Reed Jr. (13). If not for the Huskies matching the Golden Eagles in a brick-laying contest — they also posted a 20.8% clip on threes — the winning margin likely would have been larger.
As with seemingly every game this year, the Golden Eagles’ loss came with the baggage of a new doomsday statistic. More evidence of a year gone wrong. Sunday, it was the blue & gold’s first time starting conference play with four consecutive losses since going 0-5 in Conference USA in 1998-99.
Now, Marquette travels back to Milwaukee to face Xavier Wednesday night at Fiserv Forum, one of two games the rest of this season the Golden Eagles are projected to win on basketball statistics website KenPom.com.
This story was written by Jack Albright. He can be reached at jack.albright@marquette.edu or on Twitter/X @JackAlbrightMU.