CINCINNATI - Xavier and Marquette boast two of the most efficient offenses in men's college basketball.
So with a battle at the Cintas Center on Sunday, and the Golden Eagles having a chance to forge a tie atop the Big East standings, the teams were expected to put up points early and often.
That was the case in the first half.
But when the game slowed down, the No. 12 Musketeers were able to hit the knockout blows to score an 80-76 decision in the heavyweight battle with the 25th-ranked Golden Eagles.
Xavier (15-3, 7-0 Big East) has won 11 games in a row, while MU (14-5, 6-2) saw its five-game winning streak snapped.
"It's always tough coming in here," MU coach Shaka Smart said. "Because you know it's going to be a sold-out crowd.
"You know that Xavier is going to be very high energy. Obviously well-coached. I thought their guys played with terrific grit. They were able to run down some loose balls that ended up being a big difference."
BOX SCORE: Xavier 80, Marquette 76
The Golden Eagles had a 48-44 lead at the break, with the crowd of 10,508 fans highly entertained by the back-and-forth runs.
MU point guard Tyler Kolek was able to find seams in the Musketeers' defense and put up 20 points in the first half while finishing mostly down the left lane.
But Kolek scored just five points on 2-for-7 shooting in the second half, and the Golden Eagles put up just 28 points after halftime.
"They switched a little bit more," Smart said. "So when he was driving in the first half on the pick-and-roll he was able to attack what is called drop coverage where the big kind of drops back.
"If he doesn't commit, you can just keep going and lay the ball up."
Xavier center Jack Nunge said Kolek was the focus of his team's discussions of adjustments at halftime.
"We kind of let him get to his left hand too much," Nunge said. "He was really good at getting downhill, whether he was kicking it out or scoring himself.
"We just kind of had to lock in. We knew on the re-screens we're going to veer him to switch it and we did a good job in the second half."
Smart also felt like fatigue was a factor for his team.
"I thought Kam Jones got tired," the MU coach said. "I did a poor job of subbing him. I didn't realize he played 35-and-a-half minutes.
"I got to get him out of there a little bit more. Because he cuts a lot on offense, which expends energy, and I thought in the second half he was just a little bit winded and they did a good job of saying we're not going to let him get loose."
Jones scored eight of MU's first 10 points and finished with 12. But he had just two in the second half on 1-for-6 shooting.
"I feel like we got the same looks that we wanted," Jones said. "We had a few quick shots. Not too many that cost us the game. I feel like we just shot a much better percentage in the first half."
Xavier exploited its size by pulling down 17 offensive rebounds and scoring 17 second-chance points.
Not finishing off defensive stops with a rebound has been an ongoing issue with this season's MU team.
"A few 50-50 balls that we could have gotten to quicker than them," Jones said. "We talked about that in the huddle. We'll get better at that. Be quicker to the ball."
Nunge, a 7-footer, finished with 16 points and 13 rebounds, eight of which were on the offensive end.
"It's kind of pick your poison," Smart said. "They run really good action where you either got to put two guys on the ball in the pick-and-roll or on a dribble handoff. Or you got to switch.
"And I thought our guys, probably about 80% of those actions, our guys did a good job of defeating screens as we say and getting through. But on the ones where we didn't, we had to switch. Or we could have put two on the ball, but Xavier is a phenomenal passing team.
"And so we got the switches, then you got Nunge at 7 feet against Stevie Mitchell, Sean Jones, Kam Jones. And that's a huge size advantage."
It didn't help that MU center Oso Ighodaro was saddled with foul trouble in the first half. He still finished with 14 points and eight rebounds.
"Oso's one of our top two or three players on our team," Smart said. "So when you take a guy like that off the court, it's not the same.
"For us, though, especially, it's not like we have a wagonload of bigs, so when he goes off the court we have to adjust how we're playing. There's some advantages with our shooting lineup when he's out, but there's also some disadvantages to not having him out there."
The Golden Eagles showed some grit by getting a tough jumper from David Joplin – initially called a three before a video review – and a hook shot from Ighodaro to tie the game at 72-72 with 1:12 remaining.
But Xavier guard Souley Boum, who has been a key transfer from Texas-El Paso , hit a tough jumper over Ighodaro with 46 seconds left after the MU guard switched onto him.
MU's Olivier-Maxence Prosper couldn't get a jumper in the paint to fall, and Boum made four free throws in the final 28 seconds to salt away the victory.
"I think when you go on the road in this league against the first-place team, that's as close as you can ask for," Smart said. "You're not going to come in and blow anybody out.
"And so Xavier had the ball in their leading scorer's hands. We don't want to switch, but we got switched and he made a tough shot. Then we went down on the other end, I thought we got a good shot we just didn't make it around the basket."
More: Marquette coach Shaka Smart regularly talks about EGBs. What does that mean?
More: Marquette has two of the best passers in the nation. That seems like a cheat code.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Marquette drops Big East basketball showdown to first-place Xavier
