With just under four minutes left in the second half, Marquette men’s basketball held a five-point lead at the final media timeout.
But by the end of the game, the Golden Eagles (2-0) had completely turned the game on its head, scoring 16 straight points and routing the George Mason Patriots (1-1) 82-63 Friday night at the student-only game at Al McGuire Center.
Marquette head coach Shaka Smart said the difference down the stretch was how intentional his players were on offense. But senior guard Kam Jones — who earned 24 points in the win — had a different answer.
“I think that was just a testament of who we are as a team in our culture,” Jones said. “George Mason is a good team, a good A-10 team throwing a bunch of punches at us. And that showed just how resilient we were to just stay with it, stay poised. The floodgates open at some point if you stay about the right stuff.”
Marquette is now 2-0 in the student-only game era.
Joplin plays a key role in MU win
At the first student-only game in 2022, then-sophomore forward David Joplin netted a team-leading 23 points to lead his team to victory.
Tonight, it was more of the same for the senior, as he scored 19 of his 27 points in the second half alone.
“Seeing his growth and development is nothing short of amazing,” Jones said. “Just him off the court, him growing up, speaking more, talking more, taking ownership a lot more, making his presence felt more… I’m grateful to be a part of his journey and I’m grateful that he allowed me to be with him for four more years.”
In the Golden Eagles’ 16-0 run in the last four minutes, the Milwaukee, Wisconsin native scored eight of those points, hitting two treys and a jumper. He not only went a total of 5-for-11 from beyond the arc, but he also finished with 10 rebounds, all of which he grabbed in the final frame.
JOPLIN CAN’T MISS 🔥🔥🔥#MUBB | #WeAreMarquette pic.twitter.com/8kGIoc0gka
— Marquette Basketball (@MarquetteMBB) November 9, 2024
“The basketball gods rewarded him tonight, particularly in the second half with some of the shots he made, and I thought his aggressiveness on the glass was huge for us,” Marquette head coach Shaka Smart said. “We’re not the biggest team in the world, so he’s flying in there, jumping in the air and grabbing the ball. Big for us.
“But to have a double-double in a half (19 and 10), that says something about his activity, and we need every bit of that.”
First-half shooting woes spell disaster for Golden Eagles
The final score did not reflect what had happened in the first half.
To start the game, Marquette’s offense was scorching, as it went on a 13-0 run in the first four minutes. George Mason didn’t score a basket until almost four minutes had gone by.
But then the offense went cold and everything went wrong.
The Golden Eagles just couldn’t seem to put the ball in the net, going 3-for-14 from the field in the last nine minutes. Meanwhile, the Patriots slowly crawled their way back from a 14-point deficit, as senior guard Darius Maddox hit a 3-pointer with 49 seconds left to give his team a one-point lead heading into the locker room.
“When we miss shots and we get a little frantic and we get a little tiptoe-y, a little scared, that’s when things start to go downhill,” Jones said. “That’s for every team. You just have to stick with it.”
George Mason finished the first frame shooting 41.9% from the floor, while Marquette shot just 28.1%. Despite the shooting woes, Smart said he appreciated the way his team responded in the second half.
“Give our guys credit for hanging in there,” Smart said. “We shot 28% from the field in the first half, and so it’s easy when that happens to get down and to get away from a focus on the process, which I thought happened in the first half. But in the second half, our guys’ intentionality was much better.”
Up next
Marquette will return to Fiserv Forum to face Central Michigan (1-0) Monday at 8 p.m. CST.
This article was written by Kaylynn Wright. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @KaylynnWrightMU.
