Welcome to Marquette Madness. I realize that this needed a better name than what I had yesterday. Marquette Madness history works here. As noted, I’m trying to help ease the pain of not having college basketball in our lives. Thanks to Marquette having a storied history, it is likely that there will be a moment for every day until we reach an official endpoint. This is another day worth celebrating and we forget that this is also the day where Marquette returned to the tournament only to lose to South Carolina.

March 17th, 1977: Marquette played a crazy game in their regional semifinal against Kansas State in Oklahoma City. Marquette survived that game by winning 67-66. Warriors trailed by 14 points in the second half only to come back and beat the Wildcats. The crazy story from this game was Al McGuire. McGuire influenced a foul call to be overturned in the final 10 seconds of the game. He went on the court and somehow did not get a technical foul. This is a great recap from Marquette Hoops if you’re interested in learning more.

Other Marquette Games of Note
2012: Marquette returns to the Sweet 16 for the second straight year beating a much-hyped Murray State team that only lost two games all season and found themselves the sixth seed from the Ohio Valley Conference. People hyped their offensive attack and only scored 53 points versus Marquette. Jae Crowder had a double-double with 17 points and 13 rebounds.

1968 and 1973: How weird is that they played third-place games for the regionals? I believe those ended in 1981. Marquette won two third-place games against Austin Peay in 1973 and East Tennessee State in 1968. That has to be a gut-punch.

2017: Steve Wojciechowski made his first visit to the NCAA Tournament. They had to play South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina as a 7/10 matchup. It was one of the dumber things the committee did in recent memory. It seemed the only purpose was to set up a Duke-Marquette matchup.

Charlie.