Marquette’s sloppy play leads to loss at St. John’s
NEW YORK - A week ago at this time, Marquette basketball was on top of the college basketball world. The Golden Eagles were coming off a win over top-ranked Villanova — their second win over a top 10 team in less than a week — and they seemed like they had started to turn a corner as a team.
Following an 86-72 loss to St. John’s (11-13, 5-6 Big East) on Wednesday at Madison Square Garden, the feeling around the team has changed. Marquette (14-8, 5-5) has now dropped backto-back games against unranked teams in the bottom half of the conference standings and looks like a team that has lost its edge.
“I think we as a whole, we felt satisfied with what we did in that last week, which in the grand scheme of things means nothing because we lost these next two,” freshman guard Sam Hauser said. “I think it was just a matter of us feeling satisfied and not wanting more.”
As a team, Marquette looked sloppy at both ends
throughout the night. Plagued by the Red Storm’s full-court pressure and ball-hawking freshman guard Shamorie Ponds and Marcus LoVett, the Golden Eagles committed a season-high 17 turnovers in the loss.
Eleven of those were committed by Marquette’s starting backcourt, with freshman Markus Howard recording six giveaways and sophomore Haanif Cheatham five. Each of them made critical mistakes at the end of the first half.
Despite shooting just 35.3% from the field in the opening half — its thirdworst shooting half of the season — Marquette trailed by just four with under a minute left. That’s when Cheatham had his pocket picked by Ponds for a layup and Howard lost his handle, leading to a dunk by Ponds at the other end to give the Red Storm an eight-point lead at the half.
Those buckets were part of a 10-0 advantage by St. John’s in terms of fast-break points at the half. By the game’s end, the Red Storm had 18 points off turnovers — 10 in the first half and eight in the second.
“Give St. John’s credit,” head coach Steve Wojciechowski said. “Their defense played really well. Their ball pressure completely took us out of what we wanted to do . ... I thought our offense hurt our defense.”
As poorly as the first half went, Marquette rallied early in the second to pull within four with 16 minutes to go on a threepointer by redshirt junior Andrew Rowsey, who led the Golden Eagles with 21 points.
That’s as close as it would get.
Marquette missed its next six shots and committed three turnovers over the ensuing 4 1/2 minutes, which opened the door for a 13-0 run by St. John’s.
Using a lineup of Rowsey, Cheatham, Duane Wilson, Hauser and Matt Heldt for a stretch of nearly seven minutes, Marquette whittled St. John’s lead as low as seven with under nine minutes to play. That’s when the comeback attempt ran out of gas.
“(That group), they didn’t do everything right, but they were fighting and competing,” Wojciechowski said. Six out of 40 minutes is not enough. ...
“We were dead in the water there. I felt like we were going to go with the guys that competed the hardest from what I had seen up to that point in the game and they gave us a shot.”
St. John’s junior Bashir Ahmed led all scorers with 23 points while Ponds chipped in 18 points and four steals. Outside of Rowsey, who was 6 of 15 from the field, Marquette got a solid performance from Hauser, who had 14 points on 4 of 10 shooting and seven rebounds before fouling out.
The Golden Eagles shot well from the threepoint arc, finishing 13 of 32 (40.6%), but were clearly affected by the Red Storm’s seven blocks as they shot 37.1% from the field overall — their lowest total in a game this season.