DOUBLE CHAMPS! #1 Marquette 65, #2 Xavier 51!

HOLY CRAP WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT.

Your final from Madison Square Garden on Saturday night, #1 seeded Marquette 65, #2 seeded Xavier 51! Shaka Smart’s Golden Eagles are the 2023 Big East tournament champions. It is MU’s first ever Big East tournament championship, and just the program’s second ever conference tournament championship after the 1997 Conference USA tournament. Marquette is just the 10th Big East team to win both the regular season conference championship and the conference tournament championship in the same season.

And it wasn’t that close.

Marquette jumped out to leads of 12-2 and 21-4 in the first seven and a half minutes. The lead in the first half would peak at 23 on a Tyler Kolek layup with 7:02 to go before intermission. After Xavier trimmed the margin to just 15 at the break, the Golden Eagles came out of the locker room and threw a 15-3 run at the Musketeers to take a 27 point lead, doubling them up at 54-27 with 13:18 to play.

Xavier did push the thing back towards being interesting, but I suspect that is 50% Marquette slacked off the defensive intensity because, y’know, up 27, and 50% finally some shots started falling for the Musketeers who hit just 32% in the first half and 34% for the game. A Desmond Claude layup trimmed the margin to just 13, 61-48, but there was only 3:44 to play. Marquette pulled it together and said “no further,” and wrapped it up.

Tyler Kolek led all scorers with 20 points, and the 2023 Big East Tournament MOP also added eight rebounds, three assists, and three steals. David Joplin added 12 points off the bench, and Kam Jones got to double digits with 11. Oso Ighodaro led the team with nine rebounds, while Jones had the team high in assists with four.

How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Fox Sports?

Up Next: Selection Sunday is tomorrow, so we’ll be waiting to hear Greg Gumbel tell us what seed Marquette gets as the Big East’s automatic bid representative to the NCAA tournament. Is it a #2? Is it a #3? Are they going to Columbus or Des Moines, the two closest options or are they going a little further away?