Villanova Wildcats: Wildcats Roll to Victory over Marquette

The question heading into this one was how would the Villanova Wildcats respond after seeing their 20-game win streak snapped in impressive fashion at Butler.

The Villanova Wildcats [15-1, 3-1 BE) rolled in a big way today, defeating the Marquette Golden Eagles [10-5, 1-2 BE] 93-81 behind a strong game from the entire team. Led in scoring by Kris Jenkins with 23, the Wildcats made quick work of Marquette.

In the postgame presser, Marquette’s coach Steve Wojciechowski said,

“We knew coming into this game that Villanova was going to be really ready to play. That’s what championship level teams do. You knew coming off of a loss that Villanova were going to be ready and I don’t think our guys competed. I thought they were non-competitive it’s not a good thing to be against Villanova.”

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Marquette came to the Wells Fargo Center with a plan in mind to topple the Villanova Wildcats. Hold the ball in the half court offense and hit timely threes. The issue is that the Golden Eagles could only do one of those things early. Nova started the game off sloppily but kept the clamps down on defense forcing Marquette in early turnovers until they got their shots to fall.

Against a Marquette team that is lacking the toughness expected from a Golden Eagles squad, Villanova did a great job protecting the paint early. The Wildcats got off to a 5-0 run early and never looked back. By eight minutes in, all seven Wildcats who had featured in the game had scored at least two points. The Villanova Wildcats made keeping a lead look so easy as they survived an onslaught of threes from Marquette.

When asked about Marquette’s shooting and performance as a team, Jay Wright said,

“Really good team, really dangerous team. They can really play ball and they can really shoot the three. You’ve gotta play hard and you’ve gotta score points about them.”

In fact, if it wasn’t for Marquette going  7-13 from three in the first half, this game wouldn’t have been close at all. Villanova used the half to show that it doesn’t matter how well you play, they’ll just play better. Marquette shot a respectable 43% from the field in the half but Villanova was on fire shooting 65% from the field in the first half of this one.

But at least:

It was clear that Marquette’s hot shooting wouldn’t be able to keep it close as they ended the first half down 11 and it became even more apparent as the second half got underway. The Villanova Wildcats got off to a quick start and a quick three from Jalen Brunson forced the Golden Eagles into a timeout 90 seconds into the second half.

It all went downhill from there. Villanova quickly got up 20 on Marquette as the Golden Eagles’ luck from deep went dry. At this point, it was only time for one thing:

The crazy thing is how easy Villanova made it look during this one. Their balanced scoring attack is tough for any team to stop making the Butler win look even better. it was clear that the Wildcats were focused in this one so that they would avoid losing two straight.

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Any game when you shoot 65% from the field should be a win and that’s just what Villanova did tonight. They took care of business against a tough team and will be looking forward to their next game. Next up for the Wildcats is a huge conference matchup with Xavier on Tuesday at the Wells Fargo center.