Foul trouble and an inability to get into a rhythm bothered Luke Harangody for the first twenty-five minutes of the game before he went on a personal 8-0 run to tie things up at 54.  

That would be as close as Notre Dame got the rest of the way.

I think the defense was actually pretty good for most of the night, but at the same time it started showing a few holes Marquette started hitting everything.  Like Villanova on Wednesday or Georgetown early Thursday afternoon, the bucket appeared a mile wide and Jerel McNeal, Maurice Acker and Dominic James all banged in jumpers.  After Acker's second consecutive three, one of my friends exclaimed "Oh yeah, leave the guy who's hitting everything open!", although I'm not sure he realized everyone was knocking shots down.

We have all weekend to get into the nitty-gritty of the loss - Rob Kurz needs to finish, Ryan Ayers needs more touches, Luke Zeller (who actually played pretty well) needs to not airball three's when he can be cutting the margin to three - but right now Irish fans can sit back and hope the embarrassing non-conference schedule doesn't cost us too badly.  I've been trumpeting since the season started only playing one mediocre tournament and Kansas State is not enough for a team that wants a high seed, and we'll certainly be seeing the committee's disappointment in our awful numbers reflected in the seed.

I imagine we're in line to be a five seed unless movement somehow lets us stay as a four or drops us down to a six.  For the purposes of trying to maintain some level of hope going into Selection Sunday, root hard against Michigan State, Indiana, Stanford and Vanderbilt today.  But thanks to the deliciously cupcake non-conference slate, we deserve whatever seed we get, no matter what the conspiracy theorists will try and tell you.

(And before everyone starts jumping off bridges and calling for Mike Brey's resignation, just remember the teams with byes went 1-3 yesterday.)