Elevator doors close on Lazar - it's over

Lazar Hayward just walked through the lobby to applause, had a 2-year old in his jersey run up and give him a big hug, and then disappeared on the elevator with a quick wave. No head band, no longer an active Marquette player. A wonderful write up in USA Today this morning.

Mo Acker in a hood, all 5-foot-8 of him, got a hug from a family member. I missed David Cubillan if he came thorugh. I watched the Three Amigos walk through the Boise Airport with their hoods on last year, and didn't think I'd ever feel as sad to see my last of three Marquette seniors. I was wrong.

It was different. Four years of memories of Lazar, and him taking over the team this year. But a whole different love for Mo and David as they came from minor role players to stars for a final wonderful, unexpected season.

What more could they have done?

All I can be left asking is what more could the three seniors have done? Lazar had 20 points, 4 assists and another 4 steals – OUR POWERFORWARD HAD MORE ASSISTS AND STEALS THAN A GREAT GUARD USUALLY GETS. Mo Acker handled brutal pressure to hit all three of his treys, both his free throws, and dish out another three assists. David Cubillian had 14 points on 4 of 5 three point shooting, played lock down on Isaiah Thomas in the 2nd half after he ate us up in the first half, and had 14 points.

What more could the three seniors have done to win tonight and prolong the season?
With the addition of a nearly unstoppable Darius Johnson-Odom (19 points, 5 assists), who we will get to watch for another two years, the seniors did everything they could have to win – and they deserved to win.

Everyone will focus on Quincy Poindexter hitting a shot with 1.7 seconds left to play, the virtual road crowd that Washington’s coach went over to thank after the game for cheering on a rally, but the fact of the matter is Marquette went 12 of 19 three pointes (62.9%), 12 of 15 free throws (80%) and stole the ball eight times.

Marquette lost this game because the 236th best three-point shooting team in the country, Washington, which had hit only 32.5% of their treys all year, had 11 of 16 go in tonight for 68.8%. If you don't believe that just was simply a night of everything falling for Washington, consider that they also hit a 90 foot three pointer, all net, at the end of the first half, but thankfully it was waved off due to a Marquette shot clock violation.

If they had hit their season average 32.5% that would have been 5 of 16, and Marquette would be rolling into the game against New Mexico with an easy 78-62 win.

Foul calls on Lazar take away his defense, give him 10 minutes on bench

Outside of Washington’s once-in-a-lifetime three point shooting, the other deciding factor was Lazar picking up his third foul with 14:56 to play.

Marquette had taken over the game in the first five minutes of the second half.

Lazar had toughened up the defense, and MU had slowed the game.

Marquette led 43-42 at halftime, but was playing a tempo that was way too fast – 37 trips down the court in the first half. Marquette's bench is not deep enough to play at that pace. We would have run out of gas and had three guys foul out.

Before the third foul call on Lazar, the offense had slowed it down to only 7 trips in five minutes, a pace that was completely frustrating Washington and let MU jump out to a 60-45 lead a minute later.

However, the game completely changed once Lazar had three fouls. He started having to back off, and Washington realized they could go inside for easy shots every trip. They applied the defensive pressure, and pounded inside, as the West Coast crowd got fired up and the game turned into an away game for Marquette, much as the 1-point loss at Stanford had two years ago in Anaheim.

As I noted before this great run started prior to the UConn game, once it gets down to Marquette having to stop a 2-point shot at the end of the game the odds are so far against us because we don’t have anyone over 6-foot-6 to alter the shot, and how hard that makes us work to block out so we don’t give up the offensive rebound.
The game wasn’t lost when Poindexter’s shot went in with 1.7 seconds to play, or when Lazar’s last perfectly arced shot from behind half court fell left of the rim after the horn.

This great team, that was supposed to just keep the seats warm while the program was rebuilt, did everything that they could have done to win. This will always be looked back on as a GREAT season and a GREAT team – but without a poor shooting team having a career night and a game-changing foul halting MU from pulling away, this team would have been playing for at least one more round.

THANK YOU Mo, David and Lazar.