Marquette dominates Xavier to take Big East crown

History can be a heavy burden, and if you’re Marquette, that history is dominated by near-misses — of being invited to the dance only to find your date has stood you up, there’s a fly in the punch bowl and your shoes pinch.

It’s something coach Shaka Smart knows a lot about. Marquette has been to the NCAA Tournament 34 times and won only once, in 1977. Going into this weekend, it hadn’t won a Big East championship game in its first 17 seasons in the conference. Before this year, the Golden Eagles hadn’t won a regular-season conference title since 2013, and even that was a little lackluster — they had to share it with Georgetown.

But there was no sharing Saturday. No asterisk. And as for near- misses? Forget about that, too. The Golden Eagles dominated No. 2 Xavier so thoroughly, it’s a wonder they didn’t ask the Musketeers to grab the ladder when it was time to cut down the net at Madison Square Garden.

The result was a 65-51 victory that made the rest of the NCAA elites stand at attention. Marquette didn’t just look like the Big East champion it is, it looked like a team built for a Final Four.

Tournament MVP Tyler Kolek had 20 points, eight rebounds and three steals and Kam Jones added 11 points, four assists and five rebounds. Adam Kunkel led Xavier with 14 points. Marquette held Xavier to 34.4% shooting and scored 17 points on 13 Musketeers turnovers. The Golden Eagles never trailed and led by as many as 27 in the second half.

This is the first time a first and second seed have met in the Big East final since 2004; Marquette was ranked sixth nationally and Xavier 15th.

“I’d just say we played harder, honestly,” Jones said. “We came out on defense with a lot of energy. That fed into our offense. That was pretty much the story of the game, throughout the whole game.”

Added Smart: “We try to play with great violence, energy. We don’t have the biggest, strongest guys. Depending on the team we’re playing, sometimes we’re overmatched in terms of size at almost every position. But our guys have heart and they have incredible fight to them.”

So much that it barely looked like a fight.

Marquette kicked off the game with all the clamor and bluster of a national champion and Xavier, in response, had only silence. With his team overwhelmed and so markedly overmatched, Musketeers coach Sean Miller was forced to call two timeouts in the first 10:33.

The first came with 16:21 left, Xavier shooting under 20% and on the heels of Kolek’s short jumper, which put Marquette up 12-2. Miller called his second timeout with 9:27 left in the first half and the score 26-8.

That last one, at least, had marginal returns, as Xavier went on a 16-13 run in the final stretch and entered halftime with Marquette leading 39-24 (not that it helped much).

Xavier went 1-for-8 from the perimeter in the first half and shot 32.4% overall. With a distinct size disadvantage, Marquette was outrebounded 23-18, but it made good on Xavier’s sloppiness — scoring 10 points off six turnovers in the first half and turning the ball over only once.

“Tonight there are times when their effort level and their quickness, their togetherness, their communication, it was like there were six players on defense against us,” Miller said. “They’re not reliant on one or two players on a given night. Many of their players can beat you. And look, this conference is a monster, our conference.”

What’s more, Marquette’s defensive prowess Saturday could spell big trouble for the rest of the NCAA Tournament field.   Saturday’s performance was nothing short of eye-opening. In fact, it was historic. Not the burdensome kind, though.

“We can go as far as we want to go,” Smart said amid the floating confetti. “We’re not done yet.”

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.