By 9:30 a.m. Friday, a police car and barricades had closed off the block. By noon, basketball hoops and trash cans were out on the street. By 4 p.m. vendors began showing up with trucks and tents. Just before 5, students began filing past the roadblocks and into the party. By 5:15, more than 100 people had arrived. By 6, that number grew to 200. By 6:30, the line to get into the building was over 100 feet. By 6:45, it wrapped around the block and down the street.
Marquette men’s basketball was about to play on campus in front of only students in the 3,700-seat Al McGuire Center for the first time in two years.
All around, you could feel it. To the left, a few simultaneous games of knockout with a Mission BBQ trailer as their backdrop. In the middle, a big, golden inflatable Iggy the Eagle, a DJ and burgers and ice cream. On the right, some more food tents and pizza. And, oh ya, the line. How could one forget the line?
If the music, lights, festivities and razzmatazz didn’t give it away, the unending train of students and its also unending hollers, screams and chants with an occasional blaspheme certainly shed some light about what all the hubbub was for.
Doors don’t open for another 10 minutes and the line is around the Al and past the end of the building. #mubb pic.twitter.com/ObNCR7gvyb
— Jack Albright (@JackAlbrightMU) November 9, 2024
At 7, the doors opened to the cavalcade of fans who burst through the front doors, white t-shirt in hand, and immediately began filling in the lower bowl. By 7:30 the upper section got the same treatment. By 7:45 it was standing room only.
Perhaps the most highly-anticipated game for students since it was first announced in May, it naturally received more attention than the average first-week-of-November buy game.
Some — one a noticeably dressed koala — were in a state of such eagerness they waited outside in the cold for three hours. Others didn’t get to be a part of the spectacle in 2022, so this was something known about only in legend. A few were getting ready to experience their first men’s basketball game as a student.
“I wasn’t able to make the first game [Monday against Stony Brook] cause of an exam,” Blaise Wood, a first-year who’d been in line for over an hour, said beforehand. “I’m so excited. I’m here with my friends, in matching overalls, this is the most excited I’ve ever been at Marquette.”
At 8, the pregame intros commenced, “Thunderstruck” blared and the Golden Eagles got ready to tip-off for the second time inside the Al since the 2018 National Invitation Tournament.
The men’s lacrosse players occupied the space directly behind the basket on the side of the away bench. The student section leaders with their head cutouts and posters and various other tchotchkes flanked their left. The band was on the right.
On the other sides sat the rest of the 3,750 students, all in white, all raucous as ever.
By 8:10, the noise was up the wazoo.
George Mason missed two threes on the opening possession. 6-foot-11 Ben Gold got the rebound. Senior guard Stevie Mitchell hit a floater. The scoreboard read 2-0 Marquette. Pandemonium ensued.
“Nothing short of what I thought it would be,” senior Kam Jones, who remembered the 2022 student-only game, said about the environment. “We knew the fans was going to come with a bunch of energy.
“Seeing them sprint in there an hour before the game start just showed how our fans feel about our team. They want to win, too. They want to be part of a winning program. We’re very appreciative of our fans and our support system.”
What then followed was a mix of loud, quiet, then really quiet, then scarily quiet, then loud again, then really loud, then scarily loud, then blow-the-roof-off loud.
“The students [in the] first four minutes, students [in the] last four minutes,” Golden Eagles head coach Shaka Smart said, “I mean, it was deafening in there. And it was just such a unique environment.”
By the time Chase Ross hit the final free throw with 14 seconds left and No. 18 Marquette dribbled out the tense 82-63 win, see-you-later-roof levels of “We Are Marquette” chants began for all of Milwaukee to hear.
“It’s indescribable,” Jones said. “That feeling of hearing the crowd behind you, really supporting you.”
By 10:20, the students had begun filtering out of the Al. By 11, the only people that remained inside the building were workers cleaning up and a few players talking to family. By midnight, the DJ, basketball hoops, inflatable Iggy and police barricade had long been removed and 12th street was open again to the public.
The event gone for what looks to be another two years given what Smart said in a recent ‘Shaka Shuttle’ video. So back to Fiserv Forum the Golden Eagles, and students, go until then.
Godspeed, Al.
This article was written by Jack Albright. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @JackAlbrightMU.
