WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Was there any other way for Marquette men’s basketball to finish its nonconference slate?
It kicked off — after two buy game victories — with the Golden Eagles ceding 100 points in their first match against a high major opponent. It continued with them dropping two straight home games for the first time since head coach Shaka Smart’s first year in Milwaukee. It entered its last legs with a near buy game defeat and another besting at the hands of their in-state rival.
So it should come as little surprise Marquette (5-6) capped off its final game before Big East play with another defeat, this time 79-59, at the hands of No. 6 Purdue Saturday afternoon inside Mackey Arena. It means the Golden Eagles enter conference play under .500 for the first time in 25 years.
“There’s a lot we want to focus on,” Smart said. “We’re going to keep pounding the rock, I promise you that. And our guys will get better. We will grow.
“I think most importantly, just in terms of our spirit and energy, it’s got to be ‘Marquette.’ It’s got to be who we are, who we’ve been where we’ve been at our best.”
The Golden Eagles brought with them to Indiana the same issues that put them in this record-low position: poor shooting and rebounding, little paint presence and inconsistent spurts of play.
Starting with the shooting and rebounding struggles, Marquette finished 20-for-61 from the floor, 8-for-31 on threes and 6-for-12 on layups. Purdue shot 30-for-56 overall, 10-for-12 on layups and made 7 of its 23 shots from beyond the arc. The Golden Eagles lost the battle on the glass 38-29.
“Good shots we do go get we have to make a higher percentage of,” Smart said. “We got to continue to work on finishing in those plays, making layups, making open threes.”
Now, the little paint presence. Boilermaker big man Oscar Cluff had his way under the basket, posting a 22-point, 11-rebound double-double — both game-highs — on 100% shooting. As a team, the black & gold had 14 more paint points than the blue & gold, 36-22.
“A combination of his ability to work for position early and then what he did when he got the ball,” Smart said of Cluff. “That was the difference in the game: Cluff’s ability to get the ball in the post and score, and then their ability to rebound on the times where we did double the post.”
And finally, the inability to play 40 minutes of winning basketball. Marquette had multiple four-plus minute stretches with zero points, giving Purdue an early stranglehold.
The Boilermakers scored 12-straight to lead 21-10 with 9:08 left in the first half. Then, after the Golden Eagles’ defense brought the deficit back into single digits and provided momentum, they gave up a 9-0 run to trail 37-21 at halftime.
If Marquette was not already on-the-ropes enough, it opened the second half shooting 2-for-9 and 1-for-4 from deep, while Purdue went 7-of-10 to further extend its advantage.
Despite a 12-2 run over the final 3:35 and Royce Parham’s career-high 19 points on 7-of-15 shooting, the Golden Eagles were unable to avoid yet another high major defeat and the 2025-26 bar dropped even lower.
The calculus of Marquette’s solutions minus its problems ended with the blue & gold’s 20-point loss defying even the oddsmakers, who placed the line at Boilermakers -18.5.
The Golden Eagles now begin a difficult 20-game stretch of Big East play on Wednesday against Georgetown (7-3) at Fiserv Forum.
“Like coach said earlier to us, it’s just a whole new start of the season,” senior forward Ben Gold said. “Nonconference is done. Now it’s 0-0 in conference. So, going into that with the mindset of how much this really matters to us, this next 2-3 week period is what makes us.”
This story was written by Jack Albright. He can be reached at jack.albright@marquette.edu or on Twitter/X @JackAlbrightMU.