Survive And Advance: Marquette 57, St. John’s 47

I am going to be 100% honest with you: Due to the start time of the men’s basketball regular season finale at Fiserv Forum (1pm Central) and the scheduled start time of this game, I did not get a chance to watch a single square second of Marquette women’s basketball’s Big East tournament quarterfinal win over St. John’s on Saturday afternoon. This is very not cool, Big East, and maybe you should do something to fix it in the future.

ANYWAY

Marquette won, 57-47. I checked in on the score at every TV timeout of the men’s game, so I was vaguely aware of the general tenor of the game. The most important part of that tenor? Ain’t nobody shooting the ball real good. Marquette closed out the 40 minutes at 42% for the game, and that includes a 7-for-13 third quarter, while St. John’s connected on just 38% of their field goal attempts and never even touched 47% for a full quarter in the entire game.

Thankfully, the Big East uses Stat Broadcast for the tournament, so I get to use the Scoring page on the live stats to quickly get a feel for what actually happened.

GOOD THING: Marquette closed the first quarter on a 9-0 run to lead 13-9 after 10 minutes were gone.

GOOD THING: Jordan King drained a three-pointer — MARQUETTE’S ONLY MADE THREE OF THE GAME — to start the second and make it a 12-0 run and put MU up seven.

BAD THING: The Red Storm tied the game at 20 with 4:41 left before halftime, but with just 10 points total scored between then and the break, Marquette was up two, 26-24, at the half.

BAD THING: Kadaja Bailey hit a three to start the third quarter, and that was followed by a Jillian Archer bucket to put the Johnnies up three just 80 seconds into the second half.

GOOD THING: Marquette answered with a 6-0 run and then the two teams traded scoring possessions the rest of the quarter. MU held the Johnnies without a field goal for the final 4:18, but they threw in some free throws, including a pair from Unique Drake with 11 seconds left, and it was St. John’s up one, 41-40, with 10 minutes to go.

GREAT THING: The fourth quarter was all Marquette all the time, as MU held St. John’s to just three field goals and six points in the final frame. The Golden Eagles had a 10-0 run stretching from 7:30 to play to less than 1:40 to go, and Chloe Marotta and Liza Karlen stacked up all 10 points between them.

THING: A bucket from Danielle Patterson did trim Marquette’s lead to just six with 49 seconds to go, so the Golden Eagles did have to make plays down the stretch, particularly two free throws from Rose Nkumu and two more from Jordan King 10 seconds later for the final margin of the game.

Chloe Marotta’s 18 points and 14 rebounds led the way for Marquette, and they got 16 each from Jordan King and Liza Karlen. Karlen was good, going 6-for-9 from the field while King was not, shooting just 5-for-19 on the day. She was 4-for-12 in the first half and a very not good 1-for-7 in the second, and King is just going to have to be better than that if Marquette wants to reach Monday’s title game.

First, some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Fox Sports.....

Up Next: If Marquette wants to get to the title game, they’re gonna have to beat UConn for the second time this season. The #9 ranked Huskies are the #1 seed in this tournament, and they showed why on Saturday, clobbering Georgetown 69-39. The return of Azzi Fudd was not a big reason why — 10 points, two rebounds, four assists off the bench — but it definitely did not hurt Connecticut to have an extra set of very talented hands available for them. The MU/UConn semifinal is set to tipoff at 2pm Central time on Sunday, and FS1 will have the broadcast.