Marquette Golden Eagles (6-10, 1-4 Big East) vs RV Villanova Wildcats (12-3, 3-1 Big East)
Date: Saturday, January 10, 2026
Time: 1:30pm Central
Location: Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Marquette Stats Leaders
Points: Chase Ross, 16.0 ppg
Rebounds: Ben Gold, 6.8 rpg
Assists: Nigel James, 3.9 apg
Advertisement
Marquette Injury Note: Sean Jones has missed the last two games with a foot issue. Since he was in a walking boot on Wednesday, I don’t expect him to be available again until we see him without the boot on.
Villanova Stats Leaders
Points: Bryce Lindsay, 16.0 ppg
Rebounds: Duke Brennan, 11.4 rpg
Assists: Acaden Lewis, 5.0 apg
KenPom.com Rankings
Marquette: #118, exactly where they were before beating Xavier and still at their lowest ranking since going into a home game against Butler at #120 on January 30, 2016, in Steve Wojciechowski’s second season in charge
Villanova: #25
Game Projection: Villanova has a 76% chance of victory, with a predicted score of 75-68.
Advertisement
This Season So Far: We can absolutely say it’s going pretty well for Villanova, the question at hand is whether or not it’s going surprisingly well.
In the very first game of the season and thus head coach Kevin Willard’s tenure, Villanova had a competitive game with a BYU team that was expected to be nationally relevant coming into the year, and with six minutes to play, they had a 59-57 lead on the Cougars out in Las Vegas. Took a 71-66 loss, but not the worst showing against a team that might have the #1 pick in the NBA draft, y’know? After that, seven straight wins against on-paper lesser opponents, but importantly for the VU fan headspace, no silly losses that pretty much disqualified the Wildcats from the NCAA tournament before Thanksgiving like they had seen the last few years.
The winning streak got broken up by a 28 point loss to Michigan, but Dusty May’s Wolverines have an average margin of victory this season of 28.2. They’re doing that to everyone, so no shame there. Nova then won the next five in a row, including surviving Wisconsin in overtime at Fiserv Forum with an announced attendance of 7,328. Those five in a row including clipping Seton Hall on the road, 64-56, to throw a bit of a damper on how the Pirates’ season was going to that point.
However, that’s not their full season up until right now as Villanova lost at home on Thursday night. It was close, 76-72, against Creighton, but because the Bluejays shot 63% on two-point buckets and hauled in 42% of their rare misses, that game is VU’s single worst defensive performance of the season according to KenPom.com’s efficiency math at 1.208 points per possession. Yes, even worse than giving up 1.145 to Michigan.
Advertisement
Tempo Free Fun: Given that this is Kevin Willard’s first season in charge and the only rotation guy coming back from Kyle Neptune’s final season is Tyler Perkins — he starts and averaged 11/5/2/1, totally fine, not a star, whatever — we can’t make any strong proclamations about The Direction Of The Program in terms of a statistical profile or anything like that. We can try to draw through lines about What A Kevin Willard Team Usually Looks Like and talk about what Villanova is doing in that regard…. but the fact of the matter is that I don’t quite think that they fit the profile that well.
The defense is probably the thing that’s carrying over the best. If these numbers hold, Willard will be steering the ship on a KenPom top 40 defense for a fifth straight season — his last at Seton Hall and all three at Maryland — and for the sixth time in the last seven years and the eighth time since he had the #10 defense in the 2015-16 season. How he gets there fluctuates a little bit from year to year, but generally speaking it’s: Force bad shots, force a decent amount of turnovers, don’t let them shoot free throws. That fits the Wildcats right now, although the shooting defense is down a little bit and the rebounding, which is usually the hole in the situation, is a little worse than normal relative to national averages.
The process matters here, at least relative to Marquette a little bit. Villanova has a shooting defense problem, at least relative to Willard’s standard, #133 in the country isn’t awful, just down from what we’ve seen from Willard. The problem is that VU is a bad three-point shooting defense and they’re one of the worst teams in the country at giving up layups. The Wildcats are #253 in the country defending threes in terms of shooting percentage and #353 in average two point attempt distance defense. Somehow, even though they essentially do not block shots, VU is still top 90 in the country in two-point shooting percentage defense even when their average attempt against is inside three feet.
This is where the MU part of it bumps against them: The Golden Eagles are ATROCIOUS at 1) making threes and 2) making layups. Under 30% on the year from behind the arc after going 5-for-22 (23%!) against Xavier on Wednesday, and under 48% on two-pointers even though Marquette is #3 in the country right now in average two-point shooting distance. Caedin Hamilton’s first half airball from four feet? Chase Ross’ layup that rolled off in the closing seconds? You see the point here, right? Marquette can’t get those shots to fall, and those are shots that Villanova’s giving up with frequency. MU has been even worse in Big East play, shooting a league worst 26.8% on triples and a #9 under 44% on twos, even while having the best attempt distance in the league.
Advertisement
Villanova’s good on defense, but their weaknesses on that end are the specific things that Marquette’s offense is extra lousy at accomplishing. Something has to give in that interaction, and given the general direction of the season, I’m not holding my breath to see if Marquette suddenly catches fire for 40 minutes.
On offense, Villanova is going to shoot a lot of three-pointers. They’re #60 in the country in attempt rate with nearly 46% of all of their field goal attempts coming from behind the arc. When those shots are by leading scorer Bryce Lindsay (43%) or Devin Askew (40%) or Tyler Perkins (37%), Kevin Willard doesn’t lose his mind. When it’s Matthew Hodge attempting a second most per game average at just 33%? Willard’s probably not thrilled but hey, it’s not actively bad or anything…. not like Acaden Lewis, who fires off nearly three attempts per game and only hits 28% of them. VU has enough shooters that you have to contest everyone when they’re outside the arc, leaving it up to “oh, wait, no, he’s bad, that’s fine” is a bad plan because now you’re thinking and not reacting. Besides: Lewis is shooting 4-for-9 in Big East play anyway, so treat him as that shooter.
Even with all of that, Marquette’s biggest problem might be the biggest Wildcat. Duke Brennan measures in at 6’10” and 250 pounds, and the Grand Canyon transfer is one of the best rebounders in the country. He’s nearly single handedly making Villanova a dangerous offensive rebounding team since he has the 5th best OR rate in the country per KenPom, and at #37, he’s no slouch on the defensive rate side of things even if VU isn’t great over there as a team. No one else on the Nova roster is ranked on KenPom from the rebounding rate perspective of things, so if MU can keep a body on Brennan or get him into foul trouble — I don’t know, given their general team size, how VU defends the combination of Ben Gold and Royce Parham — they may be able to limit the big man from Arizona’s impact.
Marquette Last 10 Games: 3-7, with Wednesday’s win over Xavier snapping a six game losing streak.
Advertisement
Villanova Last 10 Games: 8-2, with Wednesday’s loss to Creighton snapping a five game winning streak.
All Time Series: Villanova leads, 28-20.
Current Streak: Villanova’s 81-66 victory at The Finn in February of last season snapped an all-time series record eight straight wins in the series for Marquette.
Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media
Facebook: AnonymousEagle
Instagram: AnonymousEagleSBN
Bluesky: AnonymousEagle
