Marquette happy to be back at Fiserv Forum after road-heavy stretch
The seventh-ranked Marquette men's basketball team will be glad to be back playing in front of the home fans at Fiserv Forum.
The Golden Eagles are coming off a rare stretch in which they played six of eight games on the road. That run was capped by MU's worst-margin of defeat this season in its 81-53 loss to topranked Connecticut on Saturday at the XL Center in Hartford.
So the Golden Eagles (19-6, 10-4 Big East) are looking forward to facing DePaul (3-22, 0-14) at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Fiserv Forum.
MU's only home games in the past month came against Seton Hall on Jan. 27 and St. John's on Feb. 10.
The Golden Eagles get three straight matchups at Fiserv Forum, and starting guard Kam Jones is ready to bounce back from the latest loss.
“Just being the more violent team," Jones said after the loss to the Huskies. "That's really where it starts. Be the most connected team. Be the most violent team. And the rest will take care of itself.”
Marquette finds success on road after slow start
The Golden Eagles are 11-1 at home this season, with the only blip coming against Butler on Jan. 10. MU is 40-5 at Fiserv Forum in Shaka Smart's three seasons as head coach.
But there were questions about the Golden Eagles' ability to perform away from home after dropping their first three road games to Wisconsin, Providence and Seton Hall. Marquette is 6-4 overall on the road this season, as well as 2-1 at neutral sites.
So the road-heavy schedule in the past month might have seemed daunting. MU and Providence are the the only Big East teams in the past five seasons to play six of eight league games on the road.
"I think guys being present, taking each day one at a time," Smart said of his team's approach. "We were coming into a stretch a few weeks ago and someone said to me, what are you going to do, you got four out of five on the road and six out of eight? Well, I didn't really know that. All I knew was that we were getting ready to go play a road game.
"The good thing is you don't have to play multiple games in one day. You don't have to prepare for multiple games in one two or three-day stretch. So our guys have done a good job taking them one game at a time."
MU kept rolling despite the schedule, ripping off an eight-game winning streak that was ended by the Huskies.
"Any time you lose a game like this, your focus is on your own team," Smart said. "We want to be the best version of us at the end of the season.
"And we played six of eight games on the road, including (Saturday). I think our guys' mentality and approach on the road has been tremendous up until (Saturday) and UConn had a lot to do with that. I thought we got frustrated. I thought we got disjointed, disconnected.”
Now the Golden Eagles will close the regular season with four of six at home, with a chance to earn a measure of revenge against Connecticut on March 6.