Marquette vs St. John's Basketball Recap

Marquette 63, St. John's 61 (OT)

March Madness came early on Wednesday night for the Marquette Golden Eagles. That statement works on multiple levels, too.

Yes, in one sense, the taste of March already visited coach Buzz Williams's team because the young men from Marquette University were involved in a wild, improbable and always-thrilling basketball game on Wednesday night, a rousing yet ragged affair that looked every bit the part of a crazy collegiate contest. With that having been said, March Madness established a closer relationship with these gutsy and gritty Golden Eagles because they now enjoy a certain degree of leverage in the Big East race.

It's hard to deny what happened on Wednesday at Carnesecca Arena, the on-campus home of the St. John's Red Storm in Jamaica, N.Y., removed from the big-city hoops Mecca known as Madison Square Garden. No, it's not just the fact that Marquette beat the Johnnies after 45 frenzied minutes of clamorous action; the event that truly took place in SJU's small gymnasium is that "Buzz's Boys" just might have found their way into the NCAA Tournament after skating on thin ice for so long.

Before explaining exactly how MU mustered up enough moxie and manhood to beat coach Norm Roberts' severely-dejected SJU crew, a word is in order about the journey Marquette has taken this season. The Golden Eagles, as has been well documented, couldn't buy a close win for most of this campaign. Through Jan. 23, this team was 1-7 in games decided by five points or fewer. Basketball teams have to win close games because many nail-biters will emerge over the course of a season that's 30 to 35 games long. Yet, with that having been established, it's still uncommon to see one team fall on the wrong side of the divide as many times as Marquette did. Plenty of college kids have been known to slump their shoulders and hang their heads because of late-game unluckiness, but these Golden Eagles never did sulk and pout. They just kept plugging away, and after a resilient month of competition from Jan. 26 through Feb. 21, the men from Milwaukee went 3-0 in games with a maximum margin of five points. As a result, MU went 7-1 in an eight-game stretch to vault itself onto the NCAA Tournament bubble. The Eagles were in good shape as they traveled to the St. John's campus for a rare off-Broadway show removed from "The World's Most Famous Arena," but their coaching staff knew that a loss to a lower-division Big East opponent would undo much of the work the Eagles had put in over the past month.

This subtext is precisely what made the climax of Eagles-Red Storm so fully and fittingly special.

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At the end of regulation, it appeared that the old December and January demons which had haunted Marquette in close games were going to resurface once again. With the Eagles leading 54-51, St. Johns tied the score with just 19 seconds left on a 3-pointer by guard Malik Boothe, a young man who had hit only six 3-pointers in SJU's previous 26 games. That kind of thunderbolt - which sent the game into overtime - could have sent the Eagles reeling, but steeled by their many experiences with late-game pressure, they persevered.

They also got a little lucky.

At the end of the overtime period, Marquette wing Jimmy Butler became a hero once again, but partly as a result of good fortune. Butler - who had won a game for his team on Jan. 30 with a last-second bucket at Connecticut - drove toward the basket with five seconds remaining and had the ball stripped away by the very same Malik Boothe who had created overtime in the first place. Butler recovered the orange as the ball was heading out of bounds and the game was heading toward a second extra period. The junior from Tomball, Tex., turned and was able to get off a 17-footer from the corner and beat the buzzer. The shot splashed through the net, and in a heartbeat, the trajectory of Marquette's season had changed. If MU had lost to St. John's, the Eagles would have owned a bad loss... and an 8-7 mark in the league. But now, with a road win and a 9-6 Big East record, it would seem that MU merely needs to win two of its final three regular-season games in order to feel very good about an NCAA Tournament invite.

If Marquette does indeed find its way to the field of 65, the Eagles can look back on this night as the moment when their dreams became reality. How did all this happen, you might ask?

Simply stated, "The Butler did it."

by Matt Zemek
BigEast-fans.com Staff Writer

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