Neither of these squads had won a Big East Championship prior to tonight. Two teams that have been playing in this tournament for only a few decades, and they’re not exactly from the East Coast, met in the conference championship game.
The Xavier University Musketeers in Cincinnati had been here just once before, losing in 2015 to Villanova. The Marquette University Golden Eagles in Milwaukee have never reached this point in their long and storied basketball history.
The first Midwest championship game in conference history sent ticket prices down, with gate admission price reduced to just $25. The East Coast final team fell to Marquette last night when Jordan Hawkins UConn’s couldn’t convert a shot to beat the buzzer.
Disheartened Huskies fans sold their tickets to well-traveled supporters of the championship teams, who bought them and filled the world’s most famous stadium to the brim. The Garden had sold out for five sessions in a row, something no other conference can claim.
But what was available tonight was special. It was the first time the top two seeds in the conference tournament had met in the championship game since 2004, when a Ben Gordon-led UConn team, which would win its second national title weeks later, beat Pittsburgh 61-58. . .
Marquette won its first Big East title, becoming the first school in the Midwest to do so.
Top performances from Tyler Kolek (11) and Kam Jones (1) led the way on both ends of the court
Xavier and Marquette had only met twice before in the tournament, with the Muskies winning both contests in 2014 and 2016.
Much like the second half of their game yesterday against UConn, Marquette came out hot, leading 10-2 at 5:30 p.m. of the first half. When Xavier took his first timeout at 16:21, Marquette was shooting 62.5 percent from the field, compared to the Muskies’ meager 12.5 percent.
Outside of timeout, Xavier tried to turn things around in his favor. Desmond Claude added the first points to the Musketeers’ scoreboard since 40 seconds into the contest, a drought of more than four and a half minutes.
It took Marquette just a bit of time to get his rhythm back on the next possession: he missed two shots in a row, but got the offensive rebound each time. Last night’s bench hero, David Joplin, hit a baseline 3-pointer, his weapon of choice against Connecticut.
Xavier broke his second drought of the night, this one just two and a half minutes long, at 12:15. But that only helped so much that Marquette was up at the U-12 media timeout by a 21-6 margin.
By the timeout of less than 10 minutes, the Golden Eagles had gone up by a score of 26-8 after Stevie Mitchell’s three-pointer.
When Marquette went up 31-12, it was thought: The Golden Eagles’ defense is too good. Shaka Smart’s team is well managed and the defense is very fluid: able to adapt to schemes and recognize threats. Write it down: In the right quadrant of the bracket, Marquette will go to the Final Four.
But then Xavier started running off. They led 7-0 until 2:46, while Marquette hadn’t hit a shot in more than three minutes. Xavier’s star Souley Boum got off to a dismal start to the night: he shot 0-for-6 in the under-4 timeout. Inside threat Jack Nunge was only limited to a 1-3 shooting line.
Tyler Kolek led the team with 20 points and won the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award.
Souley Boum (0) ended the night with a single point in one of his worst games
The rest of the team tried to step up. Claude put up a first half line of six points, three boards. Guard Adam Kunkel started slow but hit a crucial 3-pointer to cut the deficit to 33-17 at 3:53. Boum didn’t get his first point until he made one of two free throws at 2:37 of the first half. That was the only point he scored in the entire game.
The rest of the first half took a back and forth mentality as Joplin drained a deep dagger shot, but Xavier rallied via layups. By the time the doorbell rang, Xavier hadn’t exactly stopped the bleeding, any more than they’d laid the groundwork for triage. The Golden Eagles still led 39-24.
Xavier’s 32 percent shooting from the floor in the first half didn’t improve in the first four minutes of the second half, it was just 14 percent. Meanwhile, Marquette superstar Tyler Kolek continued to bury hit after hit in Xavier’s defense, finishing the night with 20 points, eight rebounds and three assists.
Five minutes into the last half and things seemed like a foregone conclusion. Marquette was up 47-27 and Xavier had benched Boum outright.
Midway through the final half, that 20-point lead held at 54-34. Xavier looked as if they had given up. Nunge sat down on the bench next to Boum in despair.
Marquette players ran onto the field victorious, taking their first Big East Conference crown
Tyler Kolek and Shaka Smart finally cut the nets and won the Big East title
By the media timeout at 7:52, the two teams were close to scoring for the half, with Marquette leading 18-13. However, that accumulation of points the Golden Eagles put up in the first half was too much to overcome.
Any further attempt by the musketeers to delay the inevitable was folly. Boum’s inefficiency could not be overstated. His fellow guard Caleb Jones wasn’t helping matters either: he shot 3-for-11 on the night for seven points.
In the second half U-4 media timeout, Xavier had gone on a 6-0 run to cut the deficit to 61-46. Time was running out. The players on the bench reached the ground. Milwaukee fans’ Bedlam in the Garden. The Golden Eagles finally went Gold in the Big East.
In the post-game press conference, Smart said he felt good about cutting the nets: “Tyler didn’t let us cut the nets last weekend, he said we had to save them to cut some in New York, so that’s it. all”. what we did.’