WASHINGTON — Marquette’s student-athletes are doing more than the required reading.
Before the start of the Sweet 16, the Golden Eagles saw an article that ranked them at the very bottom of all the teams remaining in the NCAA Tournament. Then, despite a wire-to-wire beatdown of ACC champion Miami on Thursday, junior guard Vander Blue had a good idea where Marquette would rank today.
“If they made an Elite Eight reseeding we’d probably be No. 8 as well,” Blue said after yesterday’s practice at the Verizon Center for today’s East Region final against Syracuse. “That just makes me want to go harder. I appreciate everyone doubting us. It’s just helping me.”
Junior forward Jamil Wilson, who led the team with 16 points in the 71-61 win over the Hurricanes, said he hasn’t had trouble finding motivation — and when he finds it, he quickly shares it with his teammates.
“We keep up with it. We’re not oblivious,” Wilson said. “Before the Miami game, somebody wrote that it was going to be a laugher and Miami would laugh at us. A lot of guys took that personally in practice. We were not going to let it be a laugher.”
Senior guard Junior Cadougan can’t quite figure it out. Third-seeded Marquette (26-8), which finished three games ahead of No. 4 seed Syracuse (29-9) in the Big East, won the teams’ only regular season meeting. Yet, the Golden Eagles enter another game as 3 1/2-point underdogs.
“Deep down in our hearts it burns us,” Cadougan said. “What we did in the Big East season, we wonder, ‘How do you forget about it?’ ”
Though Marquette had made the Sweet 16 the past two seasons, the team was picked to finish seventh in the Big East preseason poll after losing its two best players, Jae Crowder and Darius Johnson-Odom.
A 49-47 loss at Green Bay on Dec. 19 didn’t help shake the feeling the Golden Eagles would be grounded this season.
“Nobody had faith in us, but we deserve this,” Blue said. “We worked for it. A lot of people gave up on us when we lost to Green Bay, people thought we were no good, were talking about the NIT possibly, but we knew our time would come. Now we’re getting kind of greedy. We want more.”
Blue, a prized recruit who had fallen short of expectations in his first two seasons, said he struggled with his new role as the team’s leader, but he learned to embrace it, not wanting to be just another player, not wanting this to be just another team.
“When people talk about Marquette, it’s all about Dwyane Wade and him leading them to the Final Four, that’s what everybody talks about,” Blue said. “I want this team to make history and when they talk about Marquette, they’ll talk about this team.”
