After a thrilling comeback victory over Xavier in the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament, Marquette doesn’t have much time to savor the win, as it will have to face St. John’s today.
Luckily for us fans, we don’t have to do any preparation, so we do get to savor it just a bit longer.
I usually don’t do game-writeups like this, but I think that win was enormous for Marquette and deserved a bit more elaboration then just Tweets. Marquette had played well of late even two losses, but losses are still very detrimental, particularly to a team flirting with an 8-seed. The gap between historic success of the 7 and 8 seed is huge. Since 200, 62.5% of 7 seeds make the round of 32, compared to only 53% of 8 seeds. And while only 21% of 7 seeds make the Sweet 16, only 11.5% of 8 seeds have.
But aside from the numbers, the team has played much better of late and didn’t have the results to show for it. It felt like there was a mental block or doubt creeping in to the team in a close game late. Obviously that’s my conjecture, but the feeling going into the tournament having lost 3 in a row vs at least getting 1 win to break it up is significant.
This team is way more resilient than I am, so for that, I am quite thankful.
Historic Kam
I’ve been beating the drum for a while now on Twitter that what Kam Jones has been doing with his high assist numbers and miniscule turnover numbers isn’t being appreciated enough. He’s the first high major player since at least 2008 to put up over 36% assist rate while having a turnover rate under 13%.
And on Thursday, he put a bow on exactly what we’ve been talking about, becoming the first player in Big East tournament history since at least 2005 to record at least 28 points and 5 assists, all while not committing a turnover.
There has been criticism of Kam for the amount of shots he takes and misses, but when you consistently triple and quadruple assist to turnover numbers, and don’t have a secondary creator on the team, you still get insane levels of efficiency. The national media has not done a good enough job highlighting just how special he’s been.
Double Dip
One more stat to show this. Synergy has a stat called points created, which assigns a player with the points scored, plus all the points scored directly form his passes, whether that be from a made basket of free throw. Using that number, Kam created the most points of any player in the game yesterday, even though the box score showed Xavier’s Ryan Conwell with 10 more points scored.
And on that note, I plotted the top two Synergy players for points created on each team, and then charted the difference between the top player and the second best. Kam Jones has 627 more points created than David Joplin. Across the league, no other team has close to this distance, with Creighton’s Seteven Ashworth and Ryan Kalkbrenner being the only other tandem over 300 points.
What this shows is is that Kam is being asked to do more than any other player in the league on the offensive end. It’s not just that he scores a lot or assists a lot, it’s that there is no consistent secondary creator or scorer on the team, so that usually all falls on Kam.
He’s had as good a season as we’ve ever seen in a Marquette uniform.
Soul man
While Kam has all the stats that can be quantified, Stevie Mitchell does everything that can’t.
This video Marquette put out this morning may be one of the best I’ve ever seen. Take a minute and watch it.
And speaking of Stevie, seeing him hit those 2 clutch free throws to keep MU up 3 after he missed one against St. John’s shows how clutch he is. On the season he’s 13/17 in clutch FT situations, only behind Chase Ross’ 14/15.
I never want to have to say goodbye.
Player Impact Scores
Like we do after every game, we have taken Hoop-Explorer’s player impact scores and plotted them across the season in an easy to use dashboard https://lookerstudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/ffa0615f-e483-4501-b1ed-0fa945dc7946/page/2jCxD.
Scores were lower for the most part, but it was a close game and that first half was quite terrible.
Rolls Royce
Royce Parham continues to provide huge contributions when they are most needed. It wasn’t just the 10 points, it’s that he’s never afraid to take a big shot.
But obviously making them is why we are talking about it at this point in the season. I’m so excited for his potential.
Way of Wade
Everyone watching the game yesterday saw Dwyane Wade sitting courtside jumping up and cheering the team on. Can we just reread that and think how special that is.
Wade has been extremely visible in the Shaka era, which makes some sense since he’s not retired, but the guy is a legend. He doesn’t have to be in MSG on a Thursday in a random quarterfinal. His physical and vocal support is not something we can ever take for granted. He has a platform that’s so much bigger than Marquette and everything he does is an (inter)national story.
The MU GOAT is so connected to Marquette, we are not worthy.
Highlights
In case you want to watch the highlights once more…
Paint Touches 
No Peacock