Butler basketball is fresh off a huge home win over Villanova. What will it take to follow that up with a road victory over a surging Marquette team?
This Big East season has been absolutely nuts. While Seton Hall has emerged as the clear-cut favorite to win the league with a three-game advantage at the top of the standings, five teams all seem to be in the running for the second-place spot. Villanova is currently in second but the winner of the upcoming matchup between Butler and Marquette will move into a tie for the spot.
It might only be early-February, but every contest is holding a ton of weight with regard to the Big East standings at this moment.
Butler and Marquette both seem to be in the race for a high seed at the conference tournament at Madison Square Garden in a couple of weeks and both have been playing well lately. The Dawgs have won three of their last four while the Golden Eagles have won five of six. They both stand at 6-4 in conference play and this is obviously a crucial matchup as a result.
Butler won the first meeting over Marquette in overtime at Hinkle Fieldhouse a couple of weeks ago. It is important to mention that Butler’s starting point guard, Aaron Thompson, was out with an injury for that game and has since returned. The same can also be said about Marquette’s Greg Elliott, though, who is a solid reserve guard that could see an increase in playing time for this contest (he only played seven minutes in MU’s most-recent game).
Most notably, though, this will be a matchup between two of the biggest stars of the conference. Markus Howard is a clear-cut contender for the National Player of the Year award but Butler’s Kamar Baldwin is pretty darn good in his own right. This has the makings of a potentially exciting matchup with implications on seeding in both the BET and the NCAAT.
Now, without any further ado, let’s dive a bit deeper into this matchup with