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3. Marquette escapes a close call

While the Marquette Golden Eagles have been one of the more impressive teams in the entire nation, they faced quite the scare on Thursday. St. Thomas has only been a Division I team since 2021, but they gave top-ten Marquette quite the scare in an 84-79.

This is the same Marquette team that beat Notre Dame, Texas, and Kansas all by double digits, but it was St. Thomas that really figured them out because college basketball always makes sense. Wild upsets and close calls like this happen quite often, and teams can get complacent at the end of their nonconference slate.

What separates most teams in college basketball though is the quality of their big men, and that is exactly what got Marquette out of this tough situation they put themselves into. Oso Ighodaro was his usual dominant self with 21 points and eight rebounds as he led the way, and the Tommies had no answer for him.

This game is not one to raise all the alarm bells, but it is definitely something to at least be a little bit concerned about. For Golden Eagles fans, you just have to hope this was nothing but a wake-up call, and Marquette will be back to their old selves come the Providence game.

Marquette is still a great team, but games like these can either make you doubt yourselves, or light a fire under you as you realize there is always more work to be done. Given this team's recent success, it will most likely be the latter.