Marquette Basketball: Keys to first round matchup with Murray State
By Brian Foley
Other Notes
Outside of the primetime Howard-Morant showdown, there are a few other factors to keep an eye on.
- Murray State rides three of its starters: Morant, Shaq Buchanan, and Tevin Brown. All three play over 32 minutes per game. Morant and Buchanan played 40 minutes apiece in the OVC championship game.
- Brown, a 6-foot-5 freshman, is the team’s best three-point shooter at 37 percent on over seven attempts per game.
- Here are the likely starting lineups:
- Howard, Anim, Sam Hauser, Joey Hauser, Theo John
- Morant, Buchanan, Brown, KJ Williams, Cowart
- Outside of the big men, John and Cowart, neither team typically struggles with foul trouble. Both the Racers and the Golden Eagles ranked inside the top-100 in defensive foul rate this season.
- Murray State is fourth in the nation in three-point percentage allowed (29 percent), but when the Racers played Auburn in December (a No. 5 seed with a similar shot profile to Marquette), they allowed the Tigers to shoot 13-33 from deep and score 1.28 points per possession.
- Another Howard/Morant note – both guards have played one career NCAA tournament game. Howard dropped 13 points on 5-10 shooting as a freshman against the South Carolina team that ultimately advanced to the 2017 Final Four. Morant scored 14 points – also on 5-for-10 shooting – in a first-round loss to West Virginia last March.
- Murray State finished in the top half of the country in defensive turnover rate, which could be a problem for the careless Golden Eagles. Marquette has at least improved since they hit turnover rock bottom earlier this month. Across three games from Feb. 27 – March 6, MU turned it over 58 total times against Villanova, Creighton, and Seton Hall. That number has dropped to “only” 31 combined giveaways in the three games since.
If Howard is mostly healthy and Marquette can simply avoid a catastrophic number of turnovers, the Golden Eagles should win this game. Murray State isn’t a one-man band, but Marquette can still win even if Morant has a good game. Of course, things will get tighter if Howard’s injury lingers, MU turns it over 20 times, or Morant drops 50, all three of which could certainly happen.
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Predicting Marquette to pull away down the stretch in a tight game is not a smart strategy right now – check the tape in any of the last five losses for proof – but that’s where my gut is pointing me. Here’s betting Marquette wins its first tournament game since 2013, knocking off Murray State in maybe the most high-profile first-round matchup of the year.