Most things were totally fine at halftime, and then the Golden Eagles just forgot to care for the final 20 minutes.
What if I told you that Marquette men’s basketball went down to Chicago on Friday night and threw their fifth best offensive game of the season at DePaul? You’d be pretty happy with that, I’d imagine, and that is what happened, according to KenPom.com’s offensive efficiency stats. Powered by 41% three-point shooting and just seven turnovers across the entire game, the Golden Eagles played better than they have all but four times this season on the offensive end of the floor.
But you have already seen the title of this article if not the game itself, and thus you have already been spoiled as to the fact that there is a catch, a hitch, a snag in just saying “hey, look, fifth best offensive performance of the season!” and moving on with our lives.
Yes, it was the fifth best offense we’ve seen from Shaka Smart’s Golden Eagles in 2025-26.
It was also the second worst defense this season, surpassed only by the disaster against Indiana at the United Center. After DePaul scored 1.09 points per possession in the first half — honestly, that’s not awful defense, not when CJ Gunn is shooting 5-for-8 from behind the arc by himself — the Blue Demons followed that up with 1.38 points per trip down the floor after halftime.
Honestly, it was probably worse than that for Marquette for most of the second half. Why? Because a Layden Blocker bucket with four seconds left to get the first half score to 44-36 favoring MU ended up being the first basket in a 16-0 run for the Blue Demons. Marquette led by 11, 33-22, with 7:52 left in the first half, and then were down six, 50-44, with 17:51 left in the game.
16-0 actually turned into 23-3 after another seven straight by DePaul, and that had the home team up 10. With 8:50 left, Nigel James scored in the paint to finally cut the margin down to just six points and give Marquette a chance to get some stops and rally back.
9-0 DePaul, 15 point lead, there’s your ball game, 4:51 to go.
Yes, Marquette’s 15-5 run at the end made it look more competitive than it was.
Yes, Marquette had the fifth best offensive game of the season…. but that’s the 40 minutes of shots and so on. In the second half alone? Marquette scored just 0.97 points per possession…. and that’s after the 15-5 run propped that up.
Marquette got just 12 stops in the entire second half. Six of them came after DePaul was up 15.
Marquette — a team that says they pride themselves on getting three stops in a row at eight different points in the game and getting 32 deflections in a game — forced a DePaul turnover just twice in the second half……. and both were in the final three minutes.
There was a lot of things working very well for Marquette in the first half. It certainly looks like they left every single one of them in the Wintrust locker room at halftime and just refused to do anything that resembled hustle or effort or tenacity after the intermission.
And that’s how you drop to 6-13 overall and 1-7 in Big East play.
Congrats, guys. You’re the DePaul now.
Highlights, such as they are, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Fox Sports:
Up Next: Hey, remember back in mid-December when I wrote this article noting that I didn’t blame the students for electing to pass on the Valparaiso game because it was the Tuesday before finals and I understood how “I can use this time to be prepared for the end of the semester? And then I wondered what would happen to the student attendance for the first game back after winter break if the trend of the 5-5 start to the season continued?
Yeah, so, Monday evening is the first game back after winter break officially ended. Yeah, the dorms opened hours before the Villanova game, but this is the first classes back in session game. It’s Providence, fresh off the Friars very nearly blowing a 14 point lead against Creighton on Friday night but ultimately winning to move to 2-5 in the Big East, and tipoff on FS1 is set for 5pm Central.
Marquette is 1-8 since I wrote the article musing about the future of the student section attendance, one game worse than the 2-7 I picked as the number that would be a very bad time. Just think: winning at DePaul would have gotten them to 2-7…..
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Category: General Sports
