With the Marquette men’s basketball team’s 93-63 blowout win over Providence Sunday, the Golden Eagles improved to 11-6 and 2-3 in the Big East. But for a team that was projected to narrowly miss the NCAA Tournament, its record only tells part of the story.
The rest of the story, which falls through the cracks of the team’s 11-6 record, starts with a 62-59 victory over then-No. 12 Georgetown and the fact that Marquette’s last three losses — all against top 10 teams — were lost by a combined five points. The rest of the untold story finishes with the Golden Eagles’ impressive victory over the Friars.
“All of our games in conference have been so close it was so big for us to come out with a lot of passion tonight,” sophomore guard Darius Johnson-Odom said.
That passion helped Johnson-Odom drop a career-high 22 points in what was just his fifth start of the season. He shot 8-for-14 from the field, including 4-for-8 from 3-point range. Right there with Johnson-Odom were senior forward Lazar Hayward with 22 points and senior guard Maurice Acker who also turned in a career scoring high with 23 points on 8-for-9 shooting, including a perfect 6-for-6 from deep.
“I don’t know that we took a bad shot (against Providence),” coach Buzz Williams said. “And I think that that’s very hard to do within the multiple, changing defenses in the fullcourt and in the halfcourt the way Providence plays.”
After the game Acker said he had to think back to his freshman season at Ball State to remember a contest in which he played as well as he did Sunday.
Marquette detractors will be quick to suggest the 61.4 percent the Golden Eagles shot from the field and the 61.9 percent they shot from behind the arc were no surprise given the fact that before the game Providence was allowing a Big East-worst 75.8 points per game.
But once again, that doesn’t tell the entire story. Following the victory over Providence Marquette now sits fourth in the Big East in field goal percentage with 47.7, first in 3-point percentage with 43.4 and second in scoring margin with plus-14.4, behind only Syracuse.
In the mind of Johnson-Odom, the blowout of Providence was merely a matter of the team’s performance matching the outcome in the win column.
“We’ve been off so long, and our last game was a loss, and we just wanted to come out and show everybody what we can do,” he said.
Williams agreed, saying the win was the best 40 straight minutes his team has played all season.
Whether it was passion as Johnson-Odom said, the team playing up to its full potential as Williams suggested or simply a few hot hands, a win such as this proves the Golden Eagles belonged in those tight losses against West Virginia and Villanova.
“You see their close games in the Big East against the top teams,” Providence coach Keno Davis said, “It’s not a fluke that they were able to hand it to us.”
With no Big East team displaying the invincibility of last year’s Louisville, Connecticut or Pittsburgh teams, Marquette’s blowout win over Providence does more than just bring the squad closer to .500 in conference play.
“I think this will help us in further games,” Johnson-Odom said, “and help us gain more confidence as the season goes on.”
