Marquette basketball draws North Carolina in NCAA Tournament

The Marquette Golden Eagles are in the NCAA Tournament and they have a matchup with a college basketball blueblood.

The Marquette Basketball will face North Carolina in the tournament’s first round. They will face off in Fort Worth, Texas on Thursday afternoon.

The winner will probably face No. 1 seed Baylor on Saturday–unless No. 16 seed Norfolk State pulls off a miracle upset.

North Carolina drew the eight-seed after going 24-9 while Marquette is the nine-seed after finishing an unexpected 19-12 on the season.

Picked to finish no better than ninth in the Big East, the Marquette Golden Eagles rode a seven-game win streak in January to the NCAA Tournament. During that streak, Marquette beat Villanova (they also won at Villanova in February for a season sweeps), blew out Big East champion Providence, toppled tournament team Seton Hall, and best a Xavier team who was ranked at the time.

Marquette also had an early-season win over Illinois.

The Marquette Golden Eagles finished 43 in the NCAA NET rankings with five Quad 1 victories. Marquette struggled down the stretch losing five of their last eight games.

The Golden Eagles were a much better team at Fiserv Forum. They went 13-3 at home while going 6-9 away from Milwaukee in Shaka Smart’s first year as Marquette’s head coach.

How can Marquette Basketball beat North Carolina?

This is not a great matchup for the Marquette Golden Eagles.

The main reason is North Carolina has Armando Bacot. He is a 6’10” – 240 pound monster in the post that is the type of player who Marquette struggles to defend. He is averaging a double-double of 16.5 points per game and 12.5 rebounds per game.

Joining him in the frontcourt is Brady Manek. He is another big body player averaging 14.4 points a game and 5.7 rebounds a game.

The Tar Heels also have two outstanding sophomore guards in R.J. Davis and Caleb Love.

Marquette has struggled against teams with size and good guard play. They were 0-5 against Creighton and UConn.

The Marquette Golden Eagles are also not the best matchup for North Carolina with Marquette’s pick-and-roll offense.

Marquette’s offense is going to have to make shots to win this one. Especially since defense is not exactly North Carolina’s calling card. It is also key to neutralize North Carolina’s fastbreak offense.

The Golden Eagles need to create turnovers as well as create more possessions and keep North Carolina away from getting the ball into their post scorers.

The Golden Eagles are going to need Darryl Morsell to set the offensive tone early. Along with center Kur Kuath, Morsell is the only player on Marquette’s roster with NCAA Tournament game experience.

Marquette will need a big game from Justin Lewis, but they will need Morsell to hit some buckets early while the rest of the team gets the tournament jitters out.

Marquette and North Carolina have only played each other two times in the NCAA Tournament.

The last time these two programs met in the Big Dance, North Carolina blew out the Golden Eagles 81-63 in the Sweet 16 in 2011.

Marquette was just not ready for the magnitude of that type of game and it showed.

In the other meeting, the stakes were a bit higher. The programs met in the 1977 National Championship Game.

Marquette beat the Tar Heels for its only National Championship.

It was memorable because it sent out legendary coach Al McGuire a champion. McGuire announced his retirement midway through the season. He left the game with tears of joy and a title.