UConn Ended Marquette’s Big East Tournament Run In A Hurry

And now, a recitation of Marquette’s first five possessions in Sunday’s Big East tournament semifinal game against top seeded UConn:

• Turnover by way of steal
• missed shot
• missed second chance shot
• missed shot
• missed shot

The Huskies were already up 7-0 before the fifth possession even started, so things were off to a horrible start for a game where you have to play perfect basketball to pull off an upset against a national championship contender. By the time the clock said “2:00” on it in the first quarter, Marquette was already down more than a dozen points. It would never get back to single digits again as UConn rolled to a 71-51 victory.

Marquette’s shooting percentages by quarter in this game:

• 15.8%
• 29.4%
• 40%
• 46.2%

You can see how it fell apart quickly and you can see how Marquette never had a real chance of getting back into this thing.

There’s not much to say about this other than MU didn’t have the shot making to run with the Huskies, and MU’s defense wasn’t enough against a highly motivated and healthy Connecticut squad.

The only real bummer about the whole thing is this is how Marquette’s run of five straight appearances in the Big East tournament title game came to an end. It was already really apparent that the Golden Eagles had no chance of an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, not with a NET in the 70s, but it would have been nice to knock off the top dog (is it top dogs when the team mascot is a dog?) and take a swing at the autobid on Monday night. Oh well.

Up Next: We wait for the WNIT people to make a decision about the Golden Eagles. I would figure that 21-10 overall this season is good enough to make the 64 team field, which will be announced at some point on Sunday, March 13, after the NCAA field is announced.