While Marquette men’s basketball was disappointed in the bowels of Mackey Arena after its 20-point thumping at the hands of Purdue, it wasn’t devastated.
The prospect of 20 Big East games, which Ben Gold deemed “a whole new start of a season,” was why.
Well, the ‘new season’ didn’t get off to a good start on Wednesday night at Fiserv Forum, as Marquette (5-7, 0-1 Big East) fell 78-69 to Georgetown (8-3, 1-0 Big East) in its Big East lid lifter.
“In Big East basketball, it’s great anytime you can win on the road,” Georgetown head coach Ed Cooley said. “Come in and try to steal a win, you leave before they can take it away. So, it was a great game.”
The Golden Eagles showed for the first 15 minutes why they are a team capable of winning games against conference opponents, using a strong offensive start from the field to gain a 29-20 advantage with 4:56 to play in the first half.
But the remainder of the half was all Georgetown, as the Hoyas would make 9 of their final 11 shots in the period to flip the game on its head and take a 37-33 lead into the break.
“It was an extremely disappointing last five or so minutes of the first half,” Smart said. “I thought when they run made that run late (in the) first half, you could see it clearly affected the spirit, the energy we have.
“It’s really, really frustrating and disappointing right now for me, because, one of the things that we pride ourselves on as a program, and we always have, is the way we respond, the ability to focus on the next most important thing. And right now, we have a long way to go.”
Georgetown was largely able to stay in the game during its opening shooting slump through its presence on the boards, winning the rebounding margin 25-12 in the first half. Twelve of their 25 came on the offensive glass, from 19 misses, which resulted in 15 second chance points.
Similar to the last two games, Smart and company continued to tinker with lineups. Sophomore forward Royce Parham slotted into the starting lineup for the first time this season in place of senior forward Ben Gold, and, for the first time this season, junior guard Zaide Lowery did not see the floor at all.
“It’s a coach’s decision,” Smart said about benching Lowery. “We’re continuing to try to evaluate and figure out what the best lineups are and what guys we need to have in the game. From the standpoint, first and foremost, of who truly wants to pour into the other four guys with him out on the floor and be all in on Marquette. So that goes into who we play.”
The Golden Eagles got within three points of the Hoyas’ lead after senior guard Chase Ross split a pair of free throws to make it 58-55 Georgetown. But that’s as close as they would get.
The Hoyas went on a mini 10-4 run to extend their lead back up to 68-59 before sophomore forward Caleb Williams hit a dagger triple from the corner to give the Hoyas a 12-point lead. It was curtains from there.
Despite starting 6-of-10 from the field and 4-of-8 from deep, Marquette’s previously shown shooting struggles reared their ugly head for the latter part of the game as it finished shooting 42.2% from the field (27-for-64) and 26.9% (7-for-26) from 3-point range.
“Right now we have a team that, we get more affected by the negative plays that occur in terms of our psyche, than we do by the positive,” Smart said. “I’ve got to help out guys flip that and change that because you’re in these Big East games, they’re going to be wars, there are gonna be things that don’t go our way, and you just got to stay with it and build on the good things that you’re doing.”
Julius Halaifonu led Georgetown in scoring with 21 points on 7-of-10 shooting. Malik Mack (13 points), Jeremiah Williams (15 points), Langston Love (10 points) and Caleb Williams (11 points) all joined Halaifonu in double digit scoring.
Ross had his worst game of the season, shooting 1-1or-11 and scoring four points, his lone game this season scoring single-digits. The lone positive for Marquette was sophomore forward Damarius Owens, who carried over his strong finish at Purdue to post a career-high 15 points on 5-of-11 shooting. He also grabbed a team-high seven rebounds and played a season-high 27 minutes.
“My teammates, my coaches, keep instilling confidence in me everyday,” Owens said. “They’re telling me to be ready whenever my time comes or whenever my number is called. So, that readiness really allowed me to play pretty well today.”
This is Marquette’s first loss to Georgetown since the 2020-21 season, and its first home loss to the Hoyas since March 9, 2019.
Up next is a trip to Omaha to face Creighton on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. CST.
This story was written by Matthew Baltz. He can be reached at matthew.baltz@marquette.edu or on Twitter/X @MatthewBaltzMU.