I was taking a weekend tour of the University of Oxford in 2011 while studying abroad in England when Marquette blew a 16-point second half lead to Louisville. I only had a brick cell phone and this was before mobile internet was the norm, so I had no idea what had occurred until later that night when I logged in to MUScoop and saw the existential meltdowns (which, to be fair, happen after most games).
Without having to re-live the particulars of that game, I think the KenPom win probability chart is all you need to see to understand why this was such a particularly painful loss.
The rest of that season, no lead felt safe for me. There was always a sense of doom right around the corner. This was a team with three eventual NBA draft picks in Jimmy Butler, Jae Crowder and Darius Johnson-Odom, as well as two more players who logged NBA minutes in Dwight Buycks and Vander Blue. It did not lack for talent.
And yet this squad finished 9-9 in a loaded Big East, and was squarely on the bubble as the season ended, needing victories over Providence and West Virginia in the Big East Tournament to feel safe. And was still only an 11-seed when the bracket came out.
Why am I spending an NCAA gameday reminiscing about things that happened 14 years ago? Despite being a team that decreased my lifespan by a few days and caused me tremendous angst with their up and downs, when I think about 2011, I barely remember the mediocre regular season and instead can only recall Jimmy making Tu cry, DJO’s clutch 3 against Syracuse with Gus Johnson on the call, and a Sweet 16 run that broke MU through the first weekend ceiling for the first time since Wade’s Final 4 run.
I don’t remember the expectations. I don’t fret about the losses. That Sweet 16 cured all. Yes, that same team got truck-sticked by North Carolina in its next game, but it felt like a house-money game. The season was an unabashed success.
***
If you’re reading something on Paint Touches, you are probably in the 1% of NCAA basketball fans. We have a niche audience for a niche sport on a relatively niche team. And you probably know that I lean on the analytics portion of the game a little too much for any sort of analysis. So it will not surprise you that I will argue until the cows come home that regular season performance should count WAYYYY more than what a random variance generator that is a single elimination tournament provides. Performing well over the course of 30+ games is significantly more impressive than doing it for one or two.
And yet, I was the one sitting alone in the corner of Nationwide Arena in Columbus in 2023, numb from a bitter season ending loss to Michigan State in the 2nd round, unable to savor any of the goodness a double Big East title had wrought just a week before. Sure, I have great memories I still can pull up, but I will be talking about Kolek’s injury, the MSU crowd advantage, the missed goaltend for far longer and with much more passion.
No matter what anyone says, heck, no matter what I say, NCAA Tournament success is the barometer by which all teams are measured, unfair as it may be.
And that brings us to this 2025 team. I wrote about it once before but the expectations the on-court results had laid on this team in December, were not met in the regular season. A 5th place finish in the Big East and a meek semifinals loss put a bitter cap on what looked to be yet another historic season. If we measure from the crest of the non-conference performance, this was quite a disappointment.
But this is why I led this piece with that 2011 team at the top. The story is far from written.
Beat New Mexico and you can say that at minimum, these seniors were able to put up wins in 3 straight NCAA Tournaments, something no player at Marquette had done since the 1970s.
Beat Michigan State (most likely) and you can bring up all the 2023 clips with just a tad less pain, knowing that loss has been avenged, turning the tables now as a lower seed. A trip to the Sweet 16 etches this team forever as a success, and will wipe away a lot of the sour taste that the last 6 weeks have left on Marquette fans. We can keep dreaming for another week.
Which is all to say, the title of the 2025 book is yet to be written. This game and the next provide a stage for which a lot of the previous acts will be forgotten, for good or bad.
As the chills inducing hype-video from Marquette’s tremendous social media director Josh Levin says: “It doesn’t matter what went right or wrong, what matters is what’s in front of you.”
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Paint Touches 
What is the title of the book now?
Bittersweet Symphony
Very generous of you, Andrei. I would suspect you are a 3/4’s of a glass full sort of guy, not that there is anything wrong with that approach. Appreciate your site and writing,