INDIANAPOLIS — As the Marquette Golden Eagles, road warriors, savored yet another victory in a hostile place Tuesday night, their peculiar journey seemed to fit right in with the evening's usual batch of college basketball oddities.
Kentucky ended its longest home-court losing streak in 57 years when Ugonna Onyenso blocked 10 Ole Miss shots, or one of every six the Rebels tried . . . Syracuse upset No. 7 North Carolina 86-79, exactly one month after losing to the Tar Heels by 36 points . . . No. 23 Indiana State, the second best shooting team in the nation, played its first game as a ranked team in 45 years and was promptly upset 80-67 at home by Illinois State when the Sycamores went 8-for-38 from beyond the arc . . . Florida blew a 20-point second-half lead in 14 minutes at home against LSU but survived 82-80. This is the same Gators team that lost after leading Texas A&M by 13 points and Kentucky by 11 and needed overtime to win after being up on Georgia by 21.
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But back to Marquette. We have here the Golden Eagles’ schedule. Notice anything strange?
No. 4 Marquette is in the Big East, of course. So is No. 1 Connecticut. Funny thing, though. It’s Valentine’s Day and they haven’t played yet this season. But they will Saturday in Hartford, 18 days after that in Milwaukee and maybe the week after that at the Big East tournament. So they’ve avoided one another for three months but might meet three times in 10 games. Marquette also hasn’t played Xavier yet nor gone to Creighton. Talk about your backloaded conference schedule. The Golden Eagles haven’t been seen on such high ground in the polls in 46 years, but they’ll have their hands full staying up there.
Anything else? Yep. Consider the travel schedule. Marquette has had only two home games since Jan. 15 and won’t have another until Feb. 21. That’s six games out of eight on the road, which is asking a lot in a league where visitors are routinely greeted with brass knuckles, or at least it feels that way.
One more thing. Four teams have been ranked No. 1 at some point this season and after Saturday, the Golden Eagles will have played three of them. They thumped Kansas by 14 points and pushed Purdue before losing by three in Maui, and now UConn. That’ll leave only Arizona. Maybe in March.
So here we have 19-5 Marquette as something of a quiet intruder into the upper echelon of the rankings. Nos. 1-2-3 UConn, Purdue, Houston . . . all big hitters. The Golden Eagles have won one NCAA tournament game in 10 years. But they’re 4-1 against ranked opponents this season and have won five league road games and eight overall in a row. If another Big East team is to add to the league's habit of deep NCAA tournament runs — Villanova and UConn have won three of the past seven national championships and Creighton missed the Final Four by a whisker last March — you don’t have to graduate magna cum laude to understand Marquette is looking like the best candidate. Which coach Shaka Smart did, by the way, with his history degree back at Kenyon College in Ohio.
After holding off Butler 78-72 Tuesday night, Smart was remembering back when this road-heavy stretch began in mid-January.
“Someone said to me then, what are you going to do, you’ve got four out of five on the road and six out of eight? I didn’t even really know that. I just knew we were getting ready to go play a road game.”
➡️ Click or tap to see all the stats from Marquette's Tuesday night win.
The secret to safe travel in the Big East?
"I think guys being present, taking each day one at a time,” Smart said. “I think our road approach — being ready, having one mission, being in attack mode and making sure we have a defensive identity (ready . . .one . . attack . . defense. Get it? An acronym for road) — those four things (have) been very good over these last five road games. Not perfect, we’ve had lapses, but I think our guys have hung on to that anchor throughout each 40-minute stretch even when things didn’t go out way.”
Such as Tuesday night, when a 12-point lead shrank to two in the final three minutes, and all of Hinkle Fieldhouse thought Marquette might be tottering. “The crowd was going nuts, it was getting really tough out there when they cut the lead down,” Smart said. “But our guys didn’t blink.”
Marquette thrives when it can get to the rim. The Golden Eagles pounded Kansas 46-26 on the paint and Purdue 48-36. Zach Edey and all. Tuesday night at Butler, it was 46-20. They don’t damage their chances with many mistakes. They came to Hinkle Fieldhouse sixth in the nation in turnover margin and the gap over Butler was 15-7. Tyler Kolek continued his senior charge with 27 points. They can also be bothersome to the opponent’s desire to score. Butler barely shot 40 percent. ”I don’t hear a lot of people talk about their defense,” Bulldogs coach Thad Matta said. “But their defense is really, really good.”
Smart values deflections with his defense so the Golden Eagles keep strict count. When Chase Ross leaped out of bounds at the baseline to get his hands on a Butler pass Tuesday, he went sprawling over a row of photographers. Sitting nearby was the young man in charge of keeping Marquette deflections. He reached for his board and changed the number to 12. The nightly goal is 32. Marquette would finish with 35.
But now, finally, Connecticut.
“Looking forward to the game, now that this game is over,” Smart said. ”We went and visited the Roman Colosseum over the summer as a team. We’re big on themes. One big theme for us is there's the gladiator and there’s the crowd. The guys who compete in this league, not just our team, are gladiators. And then everyone who watches the game . . . that’s the crowd. The crowd really tried to get our guys to think about UConn two or three days ago. Our guys did a great job of not going for that."
“I think it’s great for the Big East that there’ll be a ton of attention put on that game. The last two years we’ve gone up there and allowed the game to get away from us, which is understandable for a lot of teams going up there. But if you want to win you’ve got to stay attached. It’s going to be a fun challenge.”
All those weapons the Golden Eagles have used to thrive on the road — the physical play, the sound offense, the mental toughness — they now have to pack to take to Hartford, where both gladiators and a frenzied crowd await. Game on in the Big East.
