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The Seton Hall Pirates will travel to Milwaukee Wednesday evening to take on the Marquette Golden Eagles. The Pirates enter this matchup at 12-3 (2-1 in conference play) while the Golden Eagles are currently 10-5 (1-2 in conference play).
These two teams are familiar with one another, as they meet in Newark on New Year’s Day. Seton Hall walked away with a 69-66 victory in a very exciting game, in which it appeared Marquette had won as they led by three points with 38 seconds remaining, but the Golden Eagles failed to hold on as the Pirates fought back and snatched the victory.
How to Watch, Listen and Stream
Game Time: 7 p.m. ET
TV: Fox Sports 1, (Brian Anderson, Stephen Bardo)
Radio: AM 540 ESPN, AM 970, 89.5 WSOU
Stream: Fox Sports Go (Where available)
Gamblin’ Info
The Golden Eagles come into this game as five-point favorites. The over/under is set at 156. All numbers are per OddsShark.
All Time Series
Marquette has won 15 of the 21 match-ups between these two teams.
Three Things to Watch For
The Importance of This Game
There are a few big matchups around the conference this week, but this is definitely one of the more intriguing showdowns. Many predict the Big East to be a five to six bid league come March, and currently the Pirates are in fifth place and the Golden Eagles are in sixth place. According to Joe Lunardi’s seed list released Monday, Seton Hall would be a 9-seed and Marquette is a bubble team listed among the first four out. Marquette cannot afford to be swept by the Pirates if they want to make the NCAA Tournament. If Marquette wins they can put themselves back on the right side of the bubble, but if Seton Hall wins the separation continues to grow between the top five Big East teams and the rest of the conference.
Second Half Play
Marquette must take advantage of the fact that they are playing in front of the home crowd and crush Seton Hall’s momentum early. The most ideal (but unlikely) situation for Marquette would be to go into halftime with a comfortable lead, as the Pirates have been a phenomenal second half team this season. Against South Carolina, the Pirates erased an seven point halftime deficit to win, and against Rutgers the Pirates overcame a nine point deficit to win by 12. On the other hand, while Marquette has shown flashes of being able to compete with any team in the Big East, they have had second half struggles in recent games.
Offensive Weapons
Both of these squads possess dangerous offensive weapons that can get hot at any point during the game. Seton Hall has Desi Rodriguez who is coming off an outstanding performance against DePaul as he scored 23 points and shot 100% from the field just in the first half. Angel Delgado is one of the top rebounders in nation and is currently averaging 14 points and 11 boards per game, the Pirates offense also features sharpshooters in Khadeen Carrington and Myles Powell. For Marquette, freshman Markus Howard has put together a great freshman campaign thus far, and contributes to Marquette's offense along with Jajuan Johnson and Luke Fischer. The Hall will also need to key in on Katin Reinhardt who scored 17 points and hit five three pointers the last time the two teams met.