Marquette Golden Eagles: Are They For Real?

My assignment was to give five questions for this Marquette team as they head into the meat of their conference schedule. The questions are supposed to help determine if the Golden Eagles can make a run deep into the NCAA Tournament.

The thing is, there aren’t five burning questions this team needs to answer—there’s just one.

Can they keep it up?

Or, more specifically, will they come up against a big man that they can’t handle?

This is a team that’s incredibly aware of both its shortcomings and its advantages.

They’re lacking size, but feature a backcourt that hasn't been matched by any other team in the country. It would be hard to make an argument against Jerel McNeal as the top guard in the nation. Dominic James is arguably the fastest player in the country, and actually seems to get faster with the ball in his hand.

The number one question entering conference play was how well Marquette would be able to handle the much larger front-courts of Big East teams like Pitt, Louisville, UConn, Notre Dame and Georgetown.

Marquette’s answer? So far, so good.

Despite a glaring size disadvantage, the Golden Eagles have managed to start their conference schedule 8-0.

How crucial is the size difference? In Saturday’s game, Marquette’s biggest man was 6’8” Dwight Burke, who played 26 minutes. Burke wouldn’t even be the fourth biggest guy on Georgetown.

After Saturday’s win, coach Buzz Williams was quick to point out that if MU continues to let opposing teams shoot 56 percent, they’ll lose a lot more games. He knows that his team needs to improve. He makes sure they know it, too.

But how does a team out-sized and out-shot dominate the second half of play? By out-rebounding the Hoyas and taking 25 more free-throws. Marquette had 30 points from the charity stripe. Georgetown had eight.

In any given game, Marquette features four players in James, McNeal, Lazar Hayward, and Wes Matthews that can put up 20-to-25 points. Teams can’t defend that.

And while those four are doing most of the offensive work—Marquette did not have one bench point during the Notre Dame win—it’s the lesser-known players that are making a difference on defense.

Maurice Aker was named team player of the week against Notre Dame despite not scoring a single point. The honor was given because he held the Irish’s Kyle McAlarney to just nine points.

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