ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- No, it's not 1977, and Al McGuire is no longer the men's head basketball coach at Marquette.
But the Warriors are making a run at the NCAA championship, and they inched one step closer by upsetting Kentucky 75-63 in the Thunder Dome Sunday. With the victory, Marquette reached the coveted Sweet 16 for the first time in 17 years. The sixth-seeded Warriors will face second-seeded Duke in Knoxville, Tenn., Thursday in a Southeast Regional semifinal.
For most of the last two decades, Marquette basketball has been synonymous with ghosts of the past. Only well-aged basketball fans remember the Warriors' "glory days" when McGuire led them to eight Sweet 16s in nine years before winning it all in 1977.
But since then, Marquette has been a mediocre basketball team at best. It reached the NCAA Tournament a handful of times since McGuire's departure but had never made it past the second round.
All that came to an end yesterday, and the Kentucky Wildcats can certainly attest to the return of greatness to Marquette basketball.
"They're an outstanding ballclub, Marquette," said Kentucky head coach Rick Pitino. "They outplayed us...They're really a good basketball team. I was very impressed."
The Wildcats probably did not know what hit them as Marquette came out strong right from the start. Just 10 minutes into the game, the Warriors had already built a 10-point lead, and there was little Kentucky could do to climb back. Marquette utilized its potent combination of inside strength (namely 6-8, 245 lbs. senior Damon Key) and clutch outside shooting to keep Kentucky at bay.
"I call [Marquette] a throw-back basketball team to when I was a player," Pitino said. "They don't have a lot of motion, they're fundamentally extremely sound, they play great defense...I think this is a fundamentally sound basketball team that goes to their strengths, and their strength is the physical size that they have."
Key was literally huge inside as he burned the Wildcats for 25 points on 9-of-17 shooting. Even more impressive is that he didn't commit a single turnover. The Kentucky guards tried to double team the Marquette inside players. But the Warriors turned to their efficient inside-outside game to render the Wildcat defense ineffective.
Even the dreaded Kentucky full-court press appeared to be full of holes. Most of those holes, however, were the often-artistic creations of Marquette point guard Tony Miller. Under Miller's leadership, the Warriors blew through the Wildcat press and rarely stopped at halfcourt. Instead they attacked the basket and made Kentucky pay by hitting high-percentage shots on the break. Miller finished the first half with six assists and just one turnover.
"Tony Miller has given us a lot great efforts over the last three years. He's personally saved my job, my career, many times along with these other guys," Marquette head coach Kevin O'Neill said. "But this is the best effort on both ends of the floor that I can ever remember Tony Miller having. We needed that kind of effort to win the game because Kentucky has a great basketball team."
In the second half, however, the Wildcats cut what was once an 18-point Marquette advantage down to two. They found some success with their press and drilled three three-pointers to force the Warriors to use a timeout.
When the teams came back on the floor, Kentucky looked poised to take control. But just as Marquette seemed to be rattled by the press, Miller magically dribbled through the entire team in coast-to-coast fashion for a lightning quick layin.
"If there was a flashier player on the court tonight than Tony Miller, I'd like to see him," O'Neill said.
In a sense, Miller's full-court drive stopped the bleeding for Marquette, which let its defense take over to secure the win.
And just how good was the Warriors' defense? Statistically it's very misleading. Jim McIlvaine, their 7-1 center, and Amal McCaskill, their 6-9 reserve, combined for just three blocks. Marquette came up with a mere seven steals and forced Kentucky into just 11 turnovers the entire game.
The key stat, however, is shooting percentage. The Wildcats were successful on just 31.6 percent of their shots. The Kentucky offense was rushed, and its normally solid trifecta attack was pitiful. The Wildcats shot just 1-for-11 from behind the three-point line in the first half and wound up hitting just 28.6 percent of their treys on the game.
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