Nova Report
The 20-6 Marquette Golden Eagles fly into Philly today to fight the 15-12 Villanova Wildcats in the Wells Fargo Center. Gametime is 7:00 pm eastern on FS1. Marquette is -1.5/142.5.
While Marquette has been beating up on the Big East doormats (DePaul and Seton Hall) their last two games; Villanova spit the bit in theirs. They were flat in Providence and lost by 13, then Tuesday gave up a 14 point lead late in the second half to lose to UCONN by 6. These teams played at Marquette on January 24 with Marquette winning 87-74.
Since then, the Wildcats offense has been playing like a #93 team while, amazingLy, the defense has been like #40. Conversely, Marquette has played like a #80 team on offense and a #59 team on defense. Strip that all away and it looks like an evenly matched game. I looked at the games Nova gave away leads in the last 5 minutes to see how they played in the following contest. They were 5-3 straight up.
Marquette is led by all everything Kam Jones(19 ppg) with a solid supporting cast in Stevie Mitchell (11.2 ppg), David Joplin (13.8 ppg), Chase Ross (10.9 ppg) and 6ā11ā Ben Gold (7.1 ppg). For Nova, Eric Dixon has played relatively poorly over the last 3 weeks (26% from 3 and dropping from 25 ppg to 22.9 for the season). Longino has stepped up his game as has Poplar.
This game looks too easy for Marquette. Every prognosticator is on Marquette. Itās the āCats for me!
Nova Pick: Villanova +1.5
Nova Pick Record:11-16