Box Score | Marquette Quotes | Seton Hall Quotes
By SEAN BRENNAN
Special to BIGEAST.com
There were 57 fouls called in the game. There were 85 free throws attempted. There were two ejections on the Marquette side of things and two on the Seton Hall side. Then there was a reinstatement on the Seton Hall side, and a very grateful - and surprised - Myles Powell got to run back onto the Garden court like he was in an updated Willis Reed TV movie.
Three Pirates fouled out of the game, one for the Golden Eagles and all Marquette coach Steve Wojciechowski could say about the way the game unfolded was, “I’ve never had anything like that happen in a basketball game before. It was unexplainable. Unexplainable.”
Oh yeah, there was a basketball game played Friday night at Madison Square Garden, even if at times it had more of a Rangers-Flyers taste to it. But despite the constant blare of referee whistles and the thinning rosters that were getting thinner by the whistle at the end, Seton Hall managed to pull out an 81-79 victory over Marquette and advance to the BIG EAST Tournament championship game where the No. 3 seed Pirates will take on top-seeded Villanova Saturday at 6:30 p.m.
It will be the Pirates first visit to the finals since 2016 when the Seton Hall, coincidentally, knocked off Villanova, 69-67.
“Like I’ve been saying to the media all year, the best thing about this team is we’re fighters,” said Powell, who scored 22 points and was involved in a bizarre situation in the second half where Powell was initially thought to be ejected from the game only to later be called back out to the bench when a technical foul called on Powell following a scrum between the two teams at first deemed his second of the game. It was, in fact, his first. He had earlier been called for a flagrant personal foul in the first half, not a technical. But the mixup temporarily sent Powell to the Pirates locker room.
Marquette’s Theo John and Sacar Anim, along with Seton Hall’s Sandro Mamukelashvili, were all ejected following the altercation that held the game up for almost 10 minutes. And without Powell, and down 53-50 at the time, prospects looked grim for a Pirates rally and victory at that point.
But when the scorebook snafu was corrected by ha referee James Breeding several minutes later, a Seton Hall assistant coach was dispatched to the locker room with some welcome news for Powell.
“He just said, ‘Coach said come back out,’” Powell said to laughs. “Once I heard that, I’m wiping my tears. ‘Come back out?’ So I ran back out. Yeah I was just happy they gave me a second chance.”
And Powell made the most of it.
Shortly after he arrived back in the game, Powell delivered back-to-back three-pointers, the second of which gave the Pirates a 64-63 lead with 6:37 to play and it was game on from there.
Three field goals by Quincy McKnight combined with a tip-in by Mike Nzei and two free throws by Powell helped the Pirates build a 74-67 lead with 2:50 to go and if Marquette was going to make a move, it was most likely going to be Markus Howard making it. And he proceeded to do just that.
After a technical foul was called on McKnight - there were nine technicals in all called in the game with six going against Seton Hall - Howard sank both the technical foul free throws and one of two on a foul call to pull the Golden Eagles within 76-72 with 1:58 to play. But Howard, a 90 percent free throw shooter on the season and about as money as you can get in situations like this, uncharacteristically misfired on three of 10 free throws in the final 1:14 and that left the door open just enough for Seton Hall.
The Pirates looked to have things in hand when they were up, 80-74 with a minute to play, but the Golden Eagles wouldn’t fold.
Howard’s final free throw of the game came with 38.5 seconds to play and pulled Marquette within 80-79. A free throw by Seton Hall’s Shavar Reynolds with 7.2 seconds left gave the Pirates a two-point lead but they could not exhale just yet. Not with seven seconds left and the ball in Howard’s hands, and everyone in the sellout crowd of 19,812 knew this was going to be Howard’s game to win or lose. And when Howard launched his 3-point attempt from the left side right near the Marquette bench, the Garden held its collective breath. But Howard’s bid for a magical March moment clanged off the rim at the buzzer and the intense, chippy, foul-plagued, hockey-like semifinal was finally in the books.
A seething Marquette coach Steve Wojciechowski tried to measure his words after the game.
“It was really tough for us not having our two best defenders, Sacar and Theo,” Wojciechowski said. “It was hard for us. Those two guys are all-defensive level players.”
Asked what he had to say to his team after the loss, Wojo was more upbeat.
“We’ve got more basketball to play,” he said. “We’re going to the NCAA Tournament. We’ve got a chance to do some things. Hey, the game of basketball can be extraordinarily crazy. We were all in the gym tonight for an extraordinarily crazy game and hats off to Seton Hall. Best of luck to them in the championship. We wish it was us but it’s not. We’re going to the NCAA Tournament and we’re going to attack that. We look forward to having a breath of fresh air because we need it.”