The Golden Eagles showed a complete lack of life on Senior Night until it was much too late to truly do anything about it.
Okay, let’s get this out of the way because I don’t want to spend any more time thinking about this year’s Marquette women’s basketball team than I have to any more.
With Marquette riding a three game winning streak and pre-game Senior Night festivities at the McGuire Center on Tuesday night, the Golden Eagles shot under 30% for the whole game and never better than 39% in any single quarter.
With an NCAA tournament bid very much not guaranteed to them, they never scored more than 15 points in any of the four quarters.
With St. John’s definitely gunning for a season sweep and going into their regular season finale knowing that they could guarantee themselves no worse than fourth place in the Big East by way of tiebreakers, the Red Storm held Marquette without a basket for nearly nine minutes of the third quarter, running off 12 straight points themselves to go up 42-29. then, after Marquette scored six points in the final minute of the third, the Johnnies opened up the fourth quarter with seven straight points to stake themselves to a 14 point lead.
To be extremely clear about this: This was a 49-35 lead. 33 minutes played by Marquette, 35 points scored. On Senior Night. Kiiiiiiinda needing a win to really lock down an NCAA tournament spot. Definitely needing a win to lock down at least fourth place in the Big East this year.
This is when the very stupid part of the game started, and yes, I realize that everything I’ve said so far was extremely stupid sounding.
With Marquette down 14 and under seven minutes to go, the Golden Eagles decided to start playing with the kind of fire that you would expect a team with something to play for would play with. Liza Karlen scored six of Marquette’s points on a 10-1 run that made it a five point game, 50-45, with 2:50 to play. St. John’s looked completely and 100% lost in the high grass, and not just your average high grass, but the high grass that grows in a very heavily wooded forest.
And then Marquette just didn’t score again for 2:29. STJ didn’t do themselves any favors either, leaving the door open over and over and over and over for Marquette, but the Golden Eagles refused to step through. Final minute, fouling, Marquette can’t do anything, yada yada, and in a perfect denoument to this game, Kenzie Hare drew an and-1 in the lane with 0.9 seconds to go to make it a six point game.
And then she missed the free throw.
Perfect ending to an awful performance by Marquette.
The Golden Eagles were 12-0 to start the season, including two wins over ranked opponents. They spent eight weeks of this season ranked in the top 25.
They are now 21-7, 10-7 in the Big East, 9-7 in their last 16 games. 6-5 in their last 11. They have looked increasingly out of sorts and lost in the woods themselves for the past month-plus. They start four seniors on a usual day, and a fifth started tonight since it was Senior Night. They have just three players who have appeared in more than 20 games this season projected to return for next season.
You can go get her now, Bill.
Up Next: Regular season finale at Butler on Saturday, 2pm Central time start, FloSports has the broadcast, Butler was tied with Marquette in Milwaukee with 4:10 to play. I don’t hold out a lot of hope for a win in Indianapolis against a team that is under .500 on the year and just 4-12 in Big East play pending a game at DePaul on Wednesday night.