Cats let opportunity slip away in 68-66 loss to Marquette

After playing an excellent first half, Villanova let an incredibly important game slip away against Marquette on Saturday afternoon, falling 68-66 and making an already difficult climb to the NCAA Tournament even more challenging.

It was an incredibly fun first half. Villanova played one of its best offensive halves of the season, connecting on 53.6% overall and 47.1% from three. Villanova was dominant on the glass, outrebounding Marquette 21-11 and taking an 8-2 advantage in second chance points. Of course, Marquette is a strong offensive team and was more than obliged to play at what constituted a blistering pace by Villanova standards. When the dust settled on the half, ‘Nova held a 44-39 lead.

While the teams raced up and down the court and traded blows, it was Villanova who landed the bigger of the punches. After falling behind 7-2 just over a minute into the game, the Wildcats ripped off a 7-0 run to take the lead. Moments later, the ‘Cats enjoyed another 6-0 push to take a 20-14 lead. After that run was snapped, ‘Nova scored five straight to take its biggest lead at eight with 8:24 to go in the half.

Marquette wasn’t going to go away and flexed a bit of its offensive prowess over the next five minutes. Three straight threes from Kam Jones capped a 16-10 spurt from the Golden Eagles that cut Villanova’s lead to two with 3:16 to go in the half. Marquette would get within one before the ‘Cats scored six of the last eight points of the half to take a five-point advantage into the break.

Cam Whitmore was fantastic in his first Villanova start. He scored 12 points on 5-6 shooting, adding six rebounds, an assist and a block. Eric Dixon (10 pts, 5 reb) and Caleb Daniels (10 pts, 3 reb, 3 ast) were also key first-half contributors.

Things started off well in the first half, with ‘Nova scoring the first four points and taking its biggest lead of the game (nine) with 17:55 to play. However, the Wildcats were not able to keep up the pressure and put Marquette away, instead getting outscored 18-7 over the next five-plus minutes to see their nine-point lead turn into a two-point deficit.

Villanova would never realty recover from that stretch. The ‘Cats did manage to retake the lead one time with 9:38 to play and would tie the game a few times down the stretch, but Marquette was able to hold the ‘Cats off. ‘Nova would get one final opportunity after Marquette missed the front end of a one-and-one with 15 seconds to go, but Eric Dixon missed a jumper and Villanova was unable to get a putback attempt to go as Marquette escaped with the two-point win.

Now, there’s a lot to unpack here.

First, we need to address the glaring difference between the first and second half. After that strong offensive first half, Villanova shot just 9-29 (31%) in the second half and 25% from three. One particular area sticks out: shots in the paint but outside of the restricted area. Marquette shot 6-12 on such attempts while Villanova was just 1-6.

It wasn’t just poor shooting that caused the offense woes, however. Turnovers continued to plague the Wildcats, and Saturday’s miscues led to nine second-half points for Marquette and 16 for the game. There was also a more general concern. The offensive sets lacked any creativity or pop. They seemed vanilla, with each one repeating the same action as the one before it which mostly led to passing around the perimeter. Sure, Villanova has had plenty of success moving the ball around the perimeter, but this was different. There was nothing to move the Marquette defense, and so no advantages were being created. It seemed the only time Villanova got away from such passing, the result was excessive dribbling that also did nothing to press the Marquette defense or create any kind of advantage or open look for the ‘Nova offense.

Second, it’s impossible to not acknowledge how big of a blow this is for Villanova. One, they seemingly had the game in hand with a nine-point lead and having played very good basketball up until that point. So, for the wheels to fall off the way they did, for the offense to disappear, for the defense to have some really tough possessions where it got exposed and for the lead to vanish in just over five minutes is incredibly frustrating. When you add to that the fact that Villanova absolutely needed this game for its NCAA Tournament hopes the frustration only mounts. We did an article recently highlighting four games that could determine Villanova’s tournament fate. A caveat was that ‘Nova would have to handle business in games it was supposed to win. Today was one of those games. With the failure to close out the win on Saturday, ‘Nova will now have to steal another game somewhere on the schedule.

The Wildcats will look to get back on track Wednesday when they take on Georgetown.