The After Dinner & The After Volleyball: #15 Creighton 71, Marquette 68

The newest episode of WandaVision went back to the first few episodes of the mini-series, giving the whole thing a 1980’s sitcom (specifically Family Ties, I believe) vibe. We open on Wanda attempting to get one of her newborn twins to sleep, and.....

oh, right.

You’re here for basketball.

See, I skipped the first 10 minutes of today’s Marquette Golden Eagles men’s basketball 71-68 loss to #15 Creighton Bluejays in order to spend some family time watching Friday’s newest episode of the Marvel series on Disney+. If you’re a huge MCU nerd, I highly recommend the series if you haven’t checked it out yet.

I do not recommend watching Marquette basketball unless you are under a doctor’s supervision.

Here’s the story of the game: After a neat and fun start to the first half, Marquette took a 31-25 lead with 3:20 left in the first half on a three-pointer from Koby McEwen. And yet, somehow, it was 38-33 Bluejays at the half and 51-39 with 12:52 left in the game after a Ryan Kalkbrenner dunk. 26-8 run for the Bluejays. Quite simply, that’s your ball game right there.

Sure, an and-1 from Symir Torrence immediately trimmed the lead to nine. But it didn’t get to eight until there was nine minutes to go, and didn’t get to seven until the 7:43 mark. Five points trimmed away in about five minutes of action and I think you can start to see the problem with this pace.

I guess the real problem is that the Marquette offense stalled out when they got it to six points, 68-62, with 2:12 to play. That’s a two possession game if you can hit some threes. Marquette did not hit some threes, not until D.J. Carton got one with 45 seconds left.

Still, I guess down three with 45 seconds left is okay. MU fouls, CU hits the throws. Carton bombs in another three, two point game, 35 seconds left.

Marquette takes too long to foul Marcus Zegarowski, who splits his throws and wait, it’s a three-point game with 23 seconds left?

Marquette can tie this? Or score a quick two and foul again to see what happens?

No, the Golden Eagles held the ball for the final shot. And then the offense fell apart and nothing looked good and we’re honestly lucky that Koby McEwen was able to get a three-pointer off with the way things were going. He missed, obviously, and Creighton goes back to Omaha for toasty hot Runza with a revenge win fresh in their hands.

Is coughing up another lead the bad part? Is falling behind by 12 the bad part? Is looking completely lost on the final play of the game the bad part? I don’t know. Is being relatively competitive with the #15 team in the country the good part? Maybe! It probably can’t be, at least not with the loss to DePaul hanging in the air.

Marquette is now back under .500 on the season, just like they were after losing to St. John’s last Sunday, except the record is now 9-10. 5-8 is the mark in league play, and that’s probably not going to get better because........

Up Next: ..... Marquette visits #3 Villanova for their next game. That’s a scheduled loss for Wednesday, February 10th.