Resurgent Big Three shows Marquette’s ceiling remains sky-high

Depth is a gift. Size is always welcome. Marquette won’t be taking health for granted anytime soon.

But at its core, success hinges on your team’s best players playing their best when the games matter most. And staring a third straight loss in the face, with a nervous rumbling echoing through Fiserv Forum, Marquette’s three stars shone brightly down the stretch with their most dominant collective effort under Shaka Smart.

Monday afternoon’s tilt against Villanova felt like groundhog day early in the second half. Five days earlier, Butler had pulled within one midway through the second half—and Tyler Kolek, Kam Jones, and Oso Ighodaro disappeared in the final 14 minutes. The trio finished the game 1-for-15—the lone make an Ighodaro dunk in garbage time—in a puzzling 7-point loss that begged the question: Do we need to reset expectations for this team?

So when the Wildcats ripped off a 10-2 run midway through the second half, with Marquette mired in a mini 1-for-5 slump, it was natural for those thoughts to creep in again.

The Big Three had other ideas—and showed why expectations for this Final Four contender are right where they need to be.

From the 9:00 mark of the second half until the final buzzer, Marquette’s All-Big East trio were nearly perfect. Those three scored 23 of Marquette’s final 30 points on 8-for-10 shooting—and one of them was a passer on nine of Marquette’s 11 made field goals in that stretch.

“When those three play well together, our chances of winning go up,” Smart said with a laugh that felt more like relief than anything else. “I think that’s the case for the Bucks, or any other team with three really great players.”

It sounds obvious—and maybe it is—but it mattered more on Monday afternoon. Down Chase Ross and Sean Jones, Marquette’s Big Three sat 9 combined minutes. And though Smart got nice contributions from the rest of their razor-thin depth chart—Stevie Mitchell’s 10 points were his most since Thanksgiving and Zaide Lowery buried back-to-back first-half triples in his first extended run of the season—there are typically three lines in the box score you need to look at to figure out Marquette’s success.

And if the Big Three are the engine that makes Marquette go, Kolek is the engine that makes the Big Three go. After a pair of disastrous performances in which he had seven combined points on 2 of 19 shooting, he was back to his usual self on Monday. Playing without Jones to move him off the ball, Kolek dished out a season-high 11 assists—six went to Ighodaro, including consecutive alley-oops to begin the game, and two went to Jones.

Though his 3-point woes continued—he missed his first four, stretching his cold streak to 1 for his last 16—he went 6-for-8 in the paint (his best mark since Notre Dame) and connected on a late 3 in front of the Marquette bench, holding his pose as the monkey fell off his back.

“When Tyler has the clarity that he had today, he’s as good as there is making that pass,” Smart said in response to the alley-oops to Ighodaro. “It’s been a lot of reflection on his part. A lot of conversations with different members of our program—coaches, players.”

Kolek wasn’t the only one to crack a cold stretch. Jones was mired in a 34/21/70 shooting slump over his previous six games but lived at the rim on Monday. Marquette emphasized getting downhill on Villanova, and Jones listened. He made all eight of his two-points attempts, and when the defense began crashing down on him in the final minutes, he made the right pass, dishing out three of his four assists in the final 6 minutes.

He only needed four attempts from deep, knocking down a pair to help him break out of a 7-for-42 slump from beyond the arc.

“I don’t think his confidence ever wavered. I don’t think his confidence ever will waver,” Mitchell said. “But it was more so just him being frustrated because he knows what he’s capable of. It’s no secret that he can shoot. For great shooters like him, it’s going to level out. We all want him to keep shooting because we know how great he is.”

Ighodaro was the benefactor of the guards playing downhill, coasting to 18 points on 9 of 11 shooting—but the main story might have been his facilitating. Albeit a small one-game sample size without Jones as a second distributor, Ighodaro dished out a season-high five assists as part of Marquette’s 24-assist effort (with just three turnovers). His seven boards and three steals limited Villanova when it wasn’t bombing away from deep.

Monday’s win didn’t extract all the demons that the past few weeks have allowed in. Kolek, Jones, and Ighodaro can’t play a combined 111 minutes each night, and the Golden Eagles will play six of their next eight games on the road.

What Monday did was give a glimpse into what this team can be when firing on all cylinders. The defense was again stout and is flirting with top-10 in efficiency through 17 games. Those inside the program swear the barrage from 3 is coming soon—Marquette shot just 30% despite their video game-like 75% from inside the arc—and solid minutes from Lowery and Norman will have a trickle effect on the rest of the roster.

But Marquette will go as far as its Big Three takes them. To see it come together all at once was a reminder of what this group has in the tank. Questions persist—and we’ll learn plenty on this road-laden schedule—but Monday was a giant leap in the right direction for a team that desperately needed it.