Despite Marquette’s struggles over the past five years, they have not been in a 1-3 hole in some time. Marquette has not started 1-3 since 2011. In that year, Golden Eagles lost close games against Villanova twice and West Virginia. Marquette would turn it around with a hot streak and end up a six seed in the NCAA Tournament. While it is still early in the Big East season, Marquette will need a hot streak at some point. And with a very good Big East, that is going to be a difficult task. The question is how good is this Marquette team? I feel like the jury is still out and that is probably a bad thing with only two months left of the season.

Only Marquette Player That Did Something: Markus Howard – He didn’t even play that well. And I could not even give him the POG for this one. Howard did score 27 points with five rebounds. He did not shoot the ball well. He missed seven two-pointers and seven three-pointers in this game. No one could score for Marquette, therefore, it all fell on the Marquette point guard. He did his best but man, Golden Eagles relied on him way too much.

Where does Marquette go from here – I mentioned this on the podcast how Anonymous Eagle wrote a great post about what’s going on with Marquette. It is rather simple but well written by Brewtown Andy. I’m trying to look for a pathway for Marquette to rite this ship, and I have zero ideas on how they do it. There is not a pocket of games where they can get hot. The fact Marquette has to play Butler twice in three weeks makes things very difficult despite one being for National Marquette Day.

Sidenote: We all bitched about that Sunday being National Marquette Day but this becomes a best-case scenario for Marquette, right? Butler will likely be a top-five team coming into this environment where Marquette could get a huge resume win).

Golden Eagles are going to need to not lose at home and try to steal a road win or two. Marquette isn’t dead in the water with the NCAA Tournament as it is still very early but a 2-0 week would go a long way to cure some of these feelings.

Next up: Marquette plays Xavier this Wednesday in a definition of a loser leaves town matchup. You hear that more in football, but one of these teams will be 1-4 in conference play after Wednesday night. Both teams have struggled defensively to start conference play. The thing to watch will be Marquette’s three-point shooting against Xavier’s strong three-point defense.