Marquette battles past Xavier 66-59

Heading into tonight’s matchup, most bracketologists still had Xavier in the tournament. ESPN’s Bracketology had the Musketeers as the second to last team in while CBS still had Xavier as a solid 10 seed. Marquette may have pushed them out tonight in their hard fought win at home.

Marquette played a very strong first half. The Golden Eagles defense was (surprisingly) swarming and aggressive, forcing Xavier into many tough and bad shots. The Musketeers shot a poor 1-11 (9.1%) from 3 in the first half and the Marquette defense locked down Zach Freemantle. They held the Xavier big man to 0 first half points on three shots. Greg Elliott played a big role in Marquette jumping out to a first half…