Marquette men’s basketball just ran out of gas.

The Golden Eagles kept it close, but the No. 1 seed UConn Huskies proved to be too much Saturday as they rolled to a 73-57 Big East Tournament championship win.

UConn pulls away 

Marquette kept pace with UConn for 30 minutes Saturday night. It was a three-point game with 9:05 to play in the second half. However, the remaining nine minutes were not kind to the Golden Eagles.

With 7:33 to play, Husky guard Jaylin Stewart hit a 3-pointer to extend UConn’s lead to 63-52. After Ben Gold hit a triple 21 seconds later in response, Stewart hit another three to put the Huskies back up 11. And that’s when the Golden Eagles entered the danger zone.

UConn outscored Marquette 24-16 in the final eight minutes, as UConn’s talent, crowd and effort just became too much for the Golden Eagles to handle down the stretch.

Mitchell plays limited minutes

After tallying 39 minutes against UConn just two weeks ago at Fiserv Forum, Stevie Mitchell only played 26 minutes in Saturday’s championship. 

Mitchell was wearing a brace on his right shoulder after taking hard shot in Marquette’s semifinal win over Providence, and only took three shots in the evening. The junior guard finished with eight points and three rebounds.

“He’ll probably play in our next game,” Marquette head coach Shaka Smart said before clarifying his answer. “Not probably, almost definitely.

“He’s banged up and got an assortment of different things (going on).”

Shooting struggles plague Golden Eagles

Marquette shot just 38.9% Saturday, going 21-for-53 from the field and 6-for-18 from deep.

Jones, who was averaging 20.5 points per game in the tournament, was held to 13 points on 5-of-17 shooting from the field. 

The Huskies outscored the Golden Eagles 47-33 and out-rebounded them 15-9 in the final half. 

Additionally, Marquette did not score for the final 2:40 of the game.

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