When you start the game with six straight stops on defense, that’s usually a pretty good sign
Sometimes in these recaps, I have to think hard about what to put in and what to leave out. Some things matter, some things do not.
On Wednesday night at Fiserv Forum, the final 30 minutes did not matter.
#5 ranked Marquette men’s basketball opened up the game with six straight stops on the defensive end, getting Jonah Lucas into the action right away waving the skunk sign on the bench. Then, after Providence scored their first four points of the game, Marquette got another seven stops in a row. This time, they scored 15 straight unanswered points to go with it, and by the end of that stretch?
27-4, Marquette lead, 10:44 to play in the first half.
The game was now over, literally nothing that happened the rest of the way mattered to the final result, which was Marquette winning by 22 after leading by as many as 24 in the first half and 28 with just barely over five minutes left before the final horn.
None of it mattered. Not referee Pat Driscoll lecturing Stevie Mitchell and PC’s Devin Carter about their physicality before an inbound, not Tyler Kolek taking on a cut on his eyebrow on the defensive end and then going down to the other end and getting bodychecked to the ground while draining a three all while not getting a single foul called and then getting sent out of the game by the refs to deal with the blood running down his face, not PC’s Josh Oduro setting the world’s worst moving screen and hockey checking Stevie Mitchell halfway to DJ Quadi’s station on the endline, not Oso Ighodaro picking up a technical foul for halfassedly shoving Oduro with one hand after said awful moving screen, not a technical foul on Providence head coach Kim English, not multiple reviews for various things but NOT a review for Chase Ross getting horsecollared (at least that’s how it looked to me from the other end of the building) to the ground underneath the hoop, not the referees tightening up their foul calls after Oduro’s awful moving screen because they wanted to maintain control of the game and avoid something extra stupid happening, not Oso Ighodaro picking up two personal fouls with nine minutes left in the first half, not Tyler Kolek playing just 18 minutes and not at all in the final 12:32 due to an oblique muscle injury that left his status as questionable, not Oso Ighodaro playing just 20 minutes partially because he sat in the first half with two and then also because the technical foul pushed him to four fouls faster, not the aforementioned Jonah Lucas burying a three-pointer from Andrew Rowsey Range to beat the shot clock on Marquette’s last official possession of the game.
Did I miss something in there? Might have, because there was an awful lot of game that just did not matter at all to the final score of the game.
Five Golden Eagles scored between 17 and 12 points, led by Kam Jones who shot 7-for-13 from the field and played a team high 32 minutes. Oso Ighodaro led all players with seven rebounds, while Tyler Kolek still managed to fit in six assists before ending his night early. Three players had two steals each to help push the Friars to 15 turnovers, and Ben Gold had a game high three blocks while he picked up the slack on both ends of the floor with Ighodaro on the bench more often than not.
Up Next: Marquette returns to action on Saturday when they head out to Nebraska to attempt the season sweep against #12 Creighton. The Bluejays crushed Seton Hall by 21 in Omaha on Wednesday night to give them five wins in their last six games as well as a nice bounce back after getting run out of Madison Square Garden on Sunday.