It’s Shaka Smart’s most important rule. A non-negotiable. The fastest way for players to lose their spot in the rotation, or vice versa. How they get a one-way ticket from the floor to the bench.
Defense. It must be “vicious” and “violent.” Anything less is unacceptable.
It’s what he’s singled out after most losses in this trying year for Marquette men’s basketball. There have not been five Golden Eagles on a string enough, rotations happen late and baskets come too easily for opponents.
It’s also what he’s credited the sparse wins to. The times where they are connected, zipping around the court, simultaneously harassing while not giving open shots.
Like Marquette’s 86-62 dismantling of Creighton Tuesday night, a near complete 180-degree turn of a scoreline from the two programs’ first matchup in December.
“I really thought in the first half,” Smart said in his opening statement, “every guy that won the game for us had a single-minded purpose to play Marquette defense.”
Then he said the kicker.
“Which,” Smart continued, “we don’t take for granted because that’s been elusive for us much of this year.”
According to BartTorvik.com, Tuesday was Marquette’s best adjusted defensive efficiency performance against a high-major opponent and second-best of the season after a 78 in the opener vs. Albany. And, it came after five straight performances with an adjusted defensive efficiency of at least 106, including a season-worst 120.6 at DePaul.
It took the Golden Eagles less than 10 minutes to skunk the Bluejays the first time, Smart speak for stopping them six times in a row. After only 15, they did it a second time. In the full 20-minute period, they held the Bluejays to shoot 10-for-33 overall and 2-for-17 from beyond the arc.
Creighton went over six minutes without a point, a time in which Marquette scored 18 in a row to extend a seven-point lead to 41-16. Bluejays head coach Greg McDermott burned his first timeout after 12 minutes and second — of his four total — with 2:51 remaining in the period. He would go on to call his team’s opening 20 minutes “embarrassing.”
It all culminated with the Golden Eagles waltzing into the locker room with a 52-23 advantage, giddy after their best first half of the season by a wide margin.
“There was deflections, there was a lot of activity,” Smart said. “There was helping each other. There was communication. Guarded the pick-and-roll well. Rotated well. And that’s how we built the lead.”
It helped that Marquette went 22-of-32 (68.8%) from the floor while making 5 of its 9 3-point attempts, but for a team shooting 42.8% overall and 30.6% from beyond the arc on the year, those efficient numbers are not a guarantee.
“We can’t always depend on that,” Smart said. “But I thought that there was a connection between our guys’ aggressiveness on the defensive end and then the crispness with which we played on the offensive end.”
These were the same two teams that experienced the exact opposite when they first played in Omaha barely over a month prior.
Then, the Golden Eagles’ defense was like a colander, allowing the Bluejays to shoot 50% with six made threes and 10 cashed free throws in the first half. Instead of going on the dominant run, Marquette ceded it, 15-0 to be exact. The blue & gold trailed the blue & white heading into the locker room.
“I feel like last game we didn’t do so well when we played them at their place,” said senior Chase Ross, who totaled two steals. “So the big emphasis was locking in, honing in on the details of what we have to do to take away what they like to do.”
Safe to say Marquette did exactly that. The Golden Eagles grabbed 11 steals, led by their first-year backcourt duo of Adrien Stevens (4) and Nigel James Jr. (3). They also forced 14 giveaways, turning them into 17 points.
“If you’re guarding at the point of attack, whether it’s Adrien Stevens, Nigel James Jr., Chase Ross, you have to take on that challenge. It’s not easy,” Smart said. “We’re asking our guys to heat up the ball all the way out to half court and have a level of aggressiveness. I thought the guys did a great job with that.”
This story was written by Jack Albright. He can be reached at jack.albright@marquette.edu or on Twitter/X @JackAlbrightMU.