On Sunday, January 28, Marquette will be hosting #1 Villanova at the Bradley Center in a major nationally televised game on Fox. It comes just one year and four days after the Golden Eagles knocked off the #1 ranked Wildcats in the BC, giving MU their first ever regular season victory over a #1 ranked opponent. To both celebrate the anniversary and preview Sunday’s game, we’re going to let the AE staff tell you their stories and memories from that January 2017 night.
The thunderous roar of a student body united as one rushing the court so beautifully you’d thought it was rehearsed. But it wasn’t. Virtually no one could have foreseen the events that played out on the night of January 24, 2017. A moment that I will remember for as long as I live.
“MARQUETTE STUNS #1 RANKED VILLANOVA” was all over the headlines the next day and I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.
Very few moments in life can move you to tears when you think back to them but this is one of them.
I am currently a senior at Marquette, and as you can tell, I love Marquette basketball. I likely wouldn’t be at Marquette if they hadn’t been so exciting in recent years. I’m also one of the more optimistic of fans that will find any reason to believe in the Golden Eagles. Even when they’re playing a much stronger opponent, I will still convince myself that there’s a way…there’s always a way. And on that day, I had a hunch. I had a hunch that Marquette would upset ‘Nova. I remember telling a couple friends that I had a collegiate dream of storming the court, and I thought it would happen that night. They laughed at me which is about the reaction I expected. But I convinced myself, that somehow someway Marquette would find a way to make my college dream a reality. And that, they did.
I actually remember very little about the game. Not because I was heavily intoxicated or anything, but simply because Marquette was completely out of it for about 32 minutes of it. I remember walking to the game with my posse. I remember being frustrated in the first half. I remember one of my good friends leaving at halftime to go cantor Tuesday night mass. Boy, would she regret that. We later came to the conclusion that she was the ultimate sacrificial lamb that was needed for God to will Marquette to victory. I don’t remember much of the second half until about that all important 5:14 mark of the second half when the Golden Eagles started their comeback.
That’s when I started getting that feeling inside my chest - that tug of anxiety and excitement – I started to really believe. With each passing minute I got more and more antsy. I began pacing up and down the aisle praying that Marquette would pull it off. Then it happened. Katin Reinhardt hits the three to tie it with just over a minute left. Katin hits two clutch free throws to put MU up two with 11 seconds left. We all know what happened next. Madness.
I was on the court hugging people I didn’t know. There were people crying, screaming, chanting, “WE ARE MARQUETTE!” I even kissed the MUTV reporter on the cheek as he was trying to recap the game and I’m totally okay with admitting that. It was the happiest I’d ever been in my life. It was the greatest moment of my life.
Of course, the fairy tale night had to be capped off with seeing Katin in the elevator of Campus Town East after the partying and festivities were over. Katin (the hero of the greatest regular season victory in the history of Marquette basketball) Reinhardt just so happened to stumble on the elevator with me and my buddy Jamey Schilling. The proof is on my Instagram because of course we needed a picture for that perfect moment. He still owes us a game of FIFA but it’s not like I’m going to hold it over him.
You live life for the memories. I will always be indebted to Marquette basketball and more specifically Katin Reinhardt for giving me the greatest memory of my life.