NEW YORK — Marquette men’s basketball knew there would be a target on its back heading into this year’s Big East Tournament.

After going 3-0 at Madison Square Garden last year en route to a Big East Tournament victory, the Golden Eagles took their first step towards lighting New York City blue & gold, beating Villanova 71-65 early Friday morning.

Mitchell shines on both ends of the floor

While Stevie Mitchell is generally known by Marquette fans as an energy-giving, defensive-minded player, the junior guard was doing it all for the Golden Eagles Thursday.

After a lackluster half on offense, Marquette was in desperate search of someone to step up in the scoring department. Mitchell did just that, as did the Reading, Pennsylvania native opened up the second half by scoring six of Marquette’s first eight points out of the break.

Mitchell finished the contest with 15 points on 6-of-11 shooting.

Wildcats don’t go down easy

Marquette never led by more than nine points Thursday. With 9:05 to play, David Joplin hit a 3-pointer to put Marquette up seven. Villanova then immediately responded with a 8-0 run to take a 51-50 lead.

After Oso Ighodaro nailed a pair of free throws to give Marquette a five point lead with three minutes remaining, the Wildcats once again responded with a 5-0 run to tie the game at 58.

Neither team scored in the final 1:50, as a layup at the horn from Kam Jones was waived off to send the game to overtime.

Oso Ighodaro comes up clutch

Oso Ighodaro had just two points on a pair of made free throws up until the final 20 seconds of the game.

But, none of that mattered when Ighodaro hit the biggest shot of the night, getting a hook shot to go with 18 seconds remaining to put Marquette up four points with 30 seconds remaining.

Ighodaro finished the night with four points, six rebounds and two assists.

This story was written by Matthew Baltz. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @MatthewBaltzMU.