Marquette finishes its nonconference schedule with road victory over Notre Dame
Ben Steele
SOUTH BEND, Ind. – The Marquette men’s basketball team is ready for the Big East.
Is the conference ready for the upstart Golden Eagles?
MU ended its nonconference schedule on an emphatic note by running away from Notre Dame with a 79-64 victory on Sunday at the Joyce Center.
Box score:Marquette 79, Notre Dame 64
The Golden Eagles (8-3) were picked by league coaches to finish ninth in the Big East. But adding a road victory against the Fighting Irish (7-3) to a home rout over Baylor will boost MU’s résumé, which also includes close losses to ranked opponents Purdue on the road and Mississippi State at a neutral site, and state rival Wisconsin at home.
“We just wanted to get a win on the road,” MU center Oso Ighodaro said. “We’ve been struggling on the road recently, just finishing games.
“So it was a great win for us. For sure."
Oso Ighodaro has monster double-double with 16 points and 18 rebounds
MU head coach Shaka Smart challenged Ighodaro last week after the center pulled down just four rebounds in a win over North Carolina Central.
“He came into this game averaging 1½ offensive rebounds,” Smart said. “I just told him ‘You’re selling yourself short, man. You can get at least three a game.’
“I didn’t know he would get seven. He’s very, very capable.”
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The 6-foot-9 Ighodaro responded in a big way with 10 rebounds by halftime, including four on the offensive glass. He finished with a college-high 18 rebounds to go with his 16 points on 7-for-10 shooting.
One area in which MU might struggle against Big East opponents is on the boards, with a thin frontcourt and an undersized center in Ighodaro.
“We’re winning games,” Ighodaro said. “I really don’t take it personally. I don’t really see it. I don’t have Twitter no more. We deleted it, most of the team deleted it this year. So I don’t be seeing the haters.
“We’re just trying to win. We don’t care what other people think. It’s just us.”
Marquette digs in defensively against the Irish
MU and Notre Dame battled evenly for most of the first half.
The Golden Eagles went into the break with a 34-29 lead after holding the Irish to one point and no field goals for the final 5 minutes and 43 seconds of the first half.
“Just a reality check of what’s it going to take,” Smart said. “We haven’t had a game since Tuesday. So we’ve been talking about this game and preparing for this game for a while.
“But then you get out there in the game and there’s the reality of this is who they have and this is how they’re playing. Film is different than live.
“We had some communication errors early in the first half. But I thought our guys the whole game, I saw a want-to in their eyes. A pride. A defensive identity. And then as the game wore on, they learned the game. They learned how we needed to defend that stuff. We got better with our switching and I thought Oso did a really good job spearheading us.”
MU then pushed the lead to a comfortable margin by scoring seven points in the first 1:13 of the second half. First, Tyler Kolek (11 points, six assists) found Stevie Mitchell with a backdoor pass for a layup. Then Kolek knocked down a step-back three-pointer and Olivier-Maxence Prosper worked his way to a left-handed layup.
MU finished with just three turnovers against Notre Dame, which wanted to slow the game down against the high-flying Golden Eagles.
“They are the type of team that the pace is always going to be a little bit challenging,” Smart said. “But I thought our guys offensively had good ball movement. Really took care of the ball well, which is a huge domino.
“Then on the defensive end, we knew the possessions were going to be long. And the guys did a good job sustaining their stance and sustaining their focus.”
Kam Jones continues to show his scoring chops
The 6-8 Prosper scored 14 points, attacking the basket and finishing 6-for-6 from the free throw line.
“Man, he’s come a long way from last year,” Smart said. “With just being able drive in there, have a level of balance, show the ball, step through and not get pushed off his spot. And he’s finishing really well.”
But 6-4 guard Kam Jones was MU’s offensive star, finishing with 25 points on 10-for-20 shooting.
The Irish crept within eight points twice late in the second half, but Jones had an answer both times.
First, he sank a three-pointer in the right corner. Then he converted a three-point play to give MU a 65-54 advantage with just over seven minutes remaining. The Golden Eagles cruised from there, taking their largest lead at 77-57.
Against Wisconsin, Jones hit a three-pointer to tie the game in overtime. So the crafty guard is becoming MU’s go-to player when it needs a basket.
“We got a lot of players that can score,” Jones said. “The ball found me in the right moments today. Three games ago it was O-Max. Kolek. So we got guys that can really play. That can really score. The ball just found me in the right places.”
MU and Notre Dame renew rivalry
MU and Notre Dame kicked off a home-and-home agreement that the schools announced in 2019.
The teams hadn’t met since the 2013 Big East tournament quarterfinals before the Irish left for the Atlantic Coast Conference. They have played 119 times, with most matchups coming when both schools were independents. The Irish hold an 81-37 advantage in the series.
MU has only faced DePaul (131) and UW (129) more times than Notre Dame.
This season’s victory won’t be mentioned in MU lore with Doc River’s buzzer-beater to beat the Irish at the MECCA in 1981, but it is still an important one for the Golden Eagles.
“I think the best thing about this game is that it was tight for most of the game,” Smart said. “And we’ve kind of struggled at times earlier in the year in some of our closer games.
“So I thought the way our guys hung in there and stayed together and then extended the lead was a great sign.”