Yeeeeesh: #8 North Carolina A Lot, #9 Marquette Much Less Than That

Welllllllllllll, that sucked.

Marquette was up 8-7 at one point in the first half against North Carolina in the first round of the 2022 NCAA tournament on Thursday afternoon.

And then it was 53-25 at the half.

And then it was 83-53 with 7:03 to go when I got around to typing out this sentence after opening up the recap.

There’s not much to say here. We can diagnose the start of the bad times to head coach Shaka Smart subbing most of his starters off at the under 16 timeout which came nearly three minutes late due to a lack of stoppages. UNC immediately ripped off a big ol’ run pretty much right on top of that, on a lineup on the floor that I don’t want to completely blame based on how everything else went, and it was all down hill from there.

Not much in the way of assessment of this game here other than the Golden Eagles got punched right in the face by the Tar Heels and just rolled over and died instead of literally any other response. It is what it is, I guess.

If you want to put something of a positive spin on this BEATEMDOWNNNNN, it’s probably this: Marquette was picked to finish 9th in the Big East and still made the NCAA tournament anyway. You’d like to not lose by 30ish in said NCAA tournament game, sure, but all the guys coming back next year — which, by the way, will pretty much be the same roster that Shaka Smart has the year after that as well — are getting a very valuable lesson in “this is how hard you have to play literally all the time to succeed in this system, if not, this is what happens” from this game.

87-57 now, 4:17 to play.

Hey, the walk ons got in. That’s good.

And we’re done, 95-63.

The season ends with Marquette at 19-13 overall.