Marquette Men’s Basketball Big East Preview Primer: vs Creighton

Marquette Golden Eagles (7-14, 2-8 Big East) vs Creighton Bluejays (12-8, 6-3 Big East)

Date: Tuesday, January 27, 2026
Time: 8:30pm Central
Location: Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Marquette Stats Leaders

Points: Chase Ross, 15.6 ppg
Rebounds: Ben Gold, 5.7 rpg
Assists: Nigel James, 4.6 apg

Marquette Injury Note: Sean Jones has missed the last seven games with a foot issue. He was out of his walking boot during the Providence game last week, so he’s moving closer towards a return but was still listed as Out on the availability report before Friday’s game against Butler. With eight games played already this season, but just 11 games left to go, I presume that he will play again if the doctors clear him before the season ends.

Creighton Stats Leaders

Points: Josh Dix, 12.8 ppg
Rebounds: Jasen Green, 5.1 rpg
Assists: Nik Graves, 3.7 apg

Creighton Injury Note: Big man Owen Freeman missed his second straight game last Wednesday against Xavier. He was listed as questionable in the availability report for that one after not being listed at all before not playing in the previous contest. However, it appears it was an illness related absence last time out.

KenPom.com Rankings

Marquette: #124, matching their lowest ranking since going into the 2014-2015 regular season finale at #124.
Creighton: #53
Game Projection: Creighton has a 64% chance of victory, with a predicted score of 78-75.

Last Time Out: Marquette’s trip to Omaha ended in about the 12th minute as the Bluejays wrapped up a 25-2 run that flipped the contest from Marquette up 15-9 to Marquette down 34-15. The Golden Eagles trailed 68-37 early in the first half before eventually taking an 84-63 loss in what is arguably their worst performance of the entire season. Eight days later, Marquette announced that Zaide Lowery was leaving the program after not making the trip to Nebraska for that game.

Since Last We Met: It feels slightly weird that Marquette went one full round of the Big East double round robin in their first 10 games without playing a single opponent twice. And yet, that is what happened, and so Game #11 of the league schedule gives the Golden Eagles their first repeat opponent of the season.

In any case, the win over Marquette moved the Bluejays to 2-0 in Big East play, and after a Christmas break, a home win over Butler got them to 3-0. They haven’t won or lost consecutive games since, bouncing back and forth for the last six contests, and their last two games have been particularly drama-laden.

On January 16, Creighton ended up with a 93-88 loss to Providence at the AMP after leading 46-45 at intermission. The Bluejays surrendered an 18-3 second half run that left them down 71-57 with 10 minutes left…. and yet, thanks to an atrocious pair of fouls by the Friars, Josh Dix had just hit a three-pointer with seven seconds left to pull them within three. One more PC boo-boo, and Creighton would have had a chance to tie the game up…. but they didn’t get it.

On January 21st, Creighton was holding together a 79-74 lead over Xavier with less than seven minutes to play. Turnovers, fouls, and poor rebounding suddenly shifted it to the Jays down four with just over five to go at CHI Health Center Omaha. All Creighton really needed was one, maybe two really well timed stops, and they could have gotten control of the game back in their hands, but Xavier held them off and with under a minute to go, CU needed that stop again to have a chance to tie or win at 93-91 Xavier.

They got the stop with 11 seconds left. Needing any shot to win, Austin Swartz headed to the rack and drew a foul off Filip Borovicanin. He made the first. He missed the second. He got his own rebound and threw in the game winner at the horn.

Tempo Free Fun: To a certain extent, Marquette lost to Creighton the first time around because a guy who was shooting 26% on three-pointers coming into the game hit all four of his three-point attempts in the game in a 90 second span. 18-15 Creighton when Nik Graves let the first one fly with 10:06 to go in the first half, 33-17 when the last one landed with 8:25 left…. oh, and Sean Jones fouled him on the last one, so 34-17. That was the ending stretch of the 25-2 run. I think it’s important to point out that this outing did not solve Graves’ three-point shooting for the season, as he’s just under 29% since that game before Christmas.

A lot more went wrong in that game for Marquette — you don’t go from down 17 to down 31 on accident, after all — but MU’s inability to alter the contest in that 90 second window when Graves was going nuts or even the four minutes that the 25-2 run took up pretty much set the table for the rest of the evening. The catch, however, is that Creighton wasn’t actually very good on that night. Yes, yes, part of that is the last 15 minutes that was largely meaningless, but through 40 minutes, Creighton only scored 1.09 points per possession in that game.

Dear reader, let me tell you this: The list of things that I would trade for Marquette holding Creighton to just 1.09 points per possession on Tuesday night is VERY long. Marquette has allowed more than 1.20 points per possession in each of their last five games. It’s been a combination of not coming anywhere close to creating turnovers at the rate that head coach Shaka Smart would obviously prefer given his stated goals of 32 deflections in a game as well as the ongoing issue of the Golden Eagles not being able to do a darn thing about defending two-point attempts.

Marquette is #217 in the country in two-point shooting defense according to KenPom.com, and they are ninth in the Big East in that department right now. Friends, Creighton shoots 57% on twos on average, which is #45 in the country and best in the Big East in league action. Barring a massive change in how things have been going for the past two-plus weeks, Creighton is going to be able to do terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things to Marquette’s defense.

Would you like some optimism? Marquette’s offense has been much improved since they visited the Bluejays. The game against Creighton was at the time and still is MU’s worst offensive game of the entire season, scoring just 0.82 points per possession. MU’s last five games has featured four of the Golden Eagles’ eight best offensive performances of the season, scoring north of 1.08 points per trip in each of those four, and the Providence win was MU’s second best outing of the entire season.

So, there’s the question: Can Creighton deal with a spicy Marquette offense, one that they did not see in the first meeting between the two teams, or will MU’s defensive downturn in the last two weeks result in the Bluejays running wild on the streets of Milwaukee?

Marquette Last 10 Games: 2-8 with losses in four of the last five games.

Creighton Last 10 Games: 7-3, but alternating wins and losses for the last six games.

All-Time Series: Marquette leads, 60-42.

Current Streak: Creighton won in Omaha earlier this season to move their current edge to two straight victories. The Golden Eagles have won four of the last seven meetings overall and the last three in a row in Milwaukee.

Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media

Facebook: AnonymousEagle
Instagram: AnonymousEagleSBN
Bluesky: AnonymousEagle