Marquette crashed the Big East title party last week with its dramatic overtime victory over St. John's, 69-67, giving them a three-way tie for first atop the conference.
With that victory, Marquette earned the third seed in the tournament and is looking to pull off another spectacular victory, this time against No. 24 Notre Dame tonight at 9 p.m. EDT.
The Golden Eagles will have to come off of a two-game bye rest period and hope to maintain their level of play despite the down time.
Having been predicted to finish seventh in the Big East conference before the season started, the Marquette squad won 8 of their last 10 games down the stretch, including victories over then No. 12 Syracuse, No. 21 Notre Dame and the nail-biter against St. John's, to give them a hard-fought share of the Big East title.
For the Golden Eagles, Vander Blue has been hot down the stretch, averaging 19 points per game in the last two games of the season, added 22 against Rutgers and 16 against St. John's. Marquette will need to see the same big play out of Blue if they hope to defeat a hungry Notre Dame team that would love to erase the memory of a 72-64 loss against the Golden Eagles just weeks ago.
Davante Gardner is going to have his hands full, however, going up against Notre Dame's Jack Cooley (10.5 rebounds per game) who has averaged more than double the rebounds Gardner (4.8 rpg) has. Notre Dame will hope for a big performance from the big man following a bout with the flu and averaging just 7 points per game over the last three games, with just two on Wednesday.
The Fighting Irish have certainly been sporadic down the stretch, but a big performance from Cooley and Jerian Grant, who have both been shaky in the past few games, could be the difference maker in the game. Cooley and Grant both average around 13.3 ppg.
Watch the action tonight on WatchESPN at this link.
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