MILWAUKEE, Wis. ― For 39 minutes on Wednesday night at Fiserv Forum, Xavier's men's basketball went step-for-step with Marquette and looked more than comfortable competing in a hostile environment against a Golden Eagles team that's sitting at the top of the Big East Conference standings for a reason.
The final minute was Xavier's downfall in a 69-68 Marquette win.
No. 16 Xavier led No. 11 Marquette 66-63 with 1:25 left. The Musketeers got a defensive stop and as Souley Boum brought the ball past half-court, the Golden Eagles started to close in on him and he turned it over, leading to a breakaway layup by Olivier-Maxence Prosper with 29 seconds left.
Following a Marquette timeout, Colby Jones inbounded the ball to Boum in the corner, where he got trapped by two Marquette defenders.
Boum tried to feed it back to Jones and a poor pass bounced off Jones' feet out of bounds.
After another Marquette timeout, KyKy Tandy was called for a foul and Marquette's Oso Ighodaro went to the line and made both. The two turnovers in a matter of seconds gave the Golden Eagles four points and a 67-66 lead with 22 seconds left.
Xavier responded with a play where Jones hit a cutting Jack Nunge for a basket that gave Xavier a 68-67 lead with eight seconds left.
But similar to Friday's loss at Butler, Xavier let Marquette charge right down the court and even though Kam Jones' running layup missed, Prosper was right there for the putback to give the Golden Eagles a 69-68 lead with 1.6 seconds left.
Xavier went with a long-distance pass and Nunge was able to catch it and get a 3-pointer off at the buzzer but it missed the mark.
"We've also won our fair share of games like this," Xavier head coach Sean Miller said. "It's hard because we just had some inexplicable things happen at the end to us. Just turnovers that as much as I'd like to give our opponent credit for forcing the turnover, I think they were about as surprised as we were.
"We just kind of gave it to them a couple times at the end."
The late turnovers and the inability to block out on the final play of the game were microcosms for the entire game.
"One thing about a last-second play, most of the time it's not the first shot that beats you," said Miller. "It's the second one. I thought that last play was the storyline of the entire second half. We could not get a defensive rebound."
Marquette got 11 second shots in the second half and 15 for the game. Those extra opportunities accounted for 15 second-chance points.
"There was plenty of times where our defense was good enough on the first shot," Miller said. "But we gave them two and sometimes three different shots."
If the rebounding wasn't enough, Xavier committed 17 turnovers. Marquette scored 21 points off those turnovers.
"In tonight's game, I'd say they forced about 11 and we gave them six," said Miller. "But we turned the ball over 17 times and they turned it over seven. In addition to that stat, they had 15 second shots ... including the game-winner, and we had four."
It didn't matter that Xavier shot 70% from the field and 71% from 3-point range in the second half. The turnovers and rebounding were more than enough to negate Xavier's shooting.
The final turnovers of the game fall on Boum. Xavier wouldn't have been in the game without him, but it's hard to understand how a guy who's been so clutch in the closing minutes all season just didn't have it on Wednesday.
"The thing about Souley is he was 10-for-15 from the floor, 4-for-8 from 3, and he had five defensive rebounds, and no doubt, he had some really costly turnovers," said Miller. "He ended up doing a lot of great things."
But Miller said that Boum hadn't been able to practice since Friday's loss at Butler where he sprained his ankle.
"I'm not going to make that excuse for him," said Miller. "But it's difficult with stakes as high as they are in a game like this to go from Friday at Butler and not be able to practice Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. He went through shootaround today for the first time and look, he did a great job. Played 39 minutes. 24 points. He's won us about five games at the end. For whatever reason tonight down the stretch he wasn't himself. I attribute that to playing in the game and not practicing for four days."
Wednesday was Xavier's fourth straight game without starting forward Zach Freemantle. The Musketeers arrived at Marquette with more bad news. Freshman Desmond Claude couldn't make the trip because of a non-COVID illness and freshman wing Kam Craft suffered a knee injury in Monday's practice that will sideline him for three or four weeks.
It meant that an already short rotation got shorter. KyKy Tandy, who hasn't played extended minutes at all in conference play, had to play 25 minutes, and when Adam Kunkel fouled out with around five minutes left in the game, Xavier was forced to play the rest of the game with a five-man rotation.
"That's not a comfortable feeling," Miller said of being without three scholarship players. "But I thought we had a good game plan. I thought our guys really focused. I have absolutely no problem with their entering the fight, competing, showing up to win."
Xavier's now 19-7 overall and 11-4 in conference play. The Musketeers host DePaul on Saturday. Xavier's now in a three-way tie for second place in the Big East with Creighton and Providence.
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