Royce Parham scored 14 points and three other Golden Eagles scored in double figures to lead Marquette to a nail-biting 66-65 win over Xavier on Wednesday night in Milwaukee.
Marquette (6-10, 1-4 Big East) snapped a six-game losing skid and picked up its first conference win. Chase Ross scored 12 with nine rebounds while Ben Gold and Nigel James Jr. each had 10 points.
Xavier (9-7, 1-4 Big East) was led by 22 points from Malik Messina-Moore. Tre Carroll added 12 with six boards.
Xavier took its first lead with two minutes to go. Marquette looked lost offensively, but James managed to grab his own miss on a layup, which led to Marquette regaining the lead with 48 seconds left on a Gold dunk.
Marquette got off to a strong start and led throughout a first half in which both teams struggled on the offensive end. The Golden Eagles went into halftime up 37-27 by closing the half on an 8-0 spurt.
Those trends continued to start the second half as they grew their largest lead of 13 with less than 12 minutes to play. They were shooting 50% from the floor in the half at the time.
What followed were familiar struggles late in games for the Golden Eagles, who had lost second-half leads in both of their prior Big East home games.
Xavier’s defense forced 10 second-half turnovers, which led to 14 points on the other end.
The Musketeers also began to knock down 3-pointers. After going 5-for-14 from deep in the first, they made 6 of 10 in the second.
