INDIANAPOLIS – Tyler Kolek had the best seat for the worst reason as Marquette closed out the regular season and conference tournament portions of the 2023-24 college basketball season. An injury left him sitting on the bench through a half-dozen games, well aware the NCAA Tournament would launch before he might be ready to play.
Oh, he was going to go, anyway.
“I would have battled through,” Kolek told The Sporting News following No. 2 seed Marquette’s 81-77 victory over No. 10 seed Colorado in the NCAA South Region second round. “I’m not feeling anything when I’m playing right now. Good thing; knock on wood. But even if I was, I would still be playing through it. That’s just the nature of who I am.
“Originally, they said a three- to four-week injury, and the three weeks would have brought us right up to the first game of the NCAA Tournament. Me, personally, I feel like I was ready to go the week before that – championship game in the Big East. But obviously, being that early, it probably wasn’t smart to go out there. The risk of re-injury was greater than the reward of winning that tournament. We had our minds set on March Madness.”
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Did it look that way on Sunday? Still within that recovery time frame, Kolek played 40 minutes, scored 21 points on 10-of-14, passed for 11 assists and grabbed 5 rebounds. The modern phrase to capture what he delivered: a double-double. Does that seem sufficient, though, to capture the wizardry contained in that series of numbers?
A second-team All-America choice by The Sporting News, Kolek converted 6-of-10 from the field in the second half, consistently beating defenders to his favored left hand and converting in tight, part of Marquette’s 15-of-21 success on layups after halftime. Included was a singular piece of magnificence with the clock racing toward 1 minute and the Golden Eagles ahead by a point. Kolek accepted a dribble handoff from forward David Joplin and lost a defender behind a screen from teammate Oso Ighodaro. He turned toward the basket and drove alone the baseline and was confronted by Colorado’s 6-11, 265-pound Eddie Lampkin. Kolek sneaked around him and into the middle of the lane, where he launched a half-hook Lampkin was late to challenge. Marquette had at least some degree of comfort, at last.
“I thought he was terrific all game, not just the second half,” Colorado coach Tad Boyle told reporters. “He's very crafty. He doesn't make a lot of mistakes. I was surprised when I was looking at the stat sheet that he had six turnovers. It didn't seem like he turned it over at all. He made a couple bad decisions, but he makes the right decision in ball screens almost every time. Not every time, but almost every time.
“He's a dual threat because he can really get to that left hand. He was 4-for-4 at halftime and every one of them was to his left hand and that was part of our game plan was to try to take that left hand away. He's very good at getting back to it, they're very good at changing angles on the screens.
“But he's a terrific player. You appreciate him on film, then you appreciate him with his numbers, but then you play against him, and you're like, holy cow, that kid is special.”
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A year ago, Marquette arrived in the NCAAs fresh of a triumph in the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden. The Golden Eagles had taken out Connecticut and Xavier on consecutive days to win it. Those two teams would go on to win a combined eight games in March Madness. Marquette would win one, then fade in a disappointing second-round effort against Michigan State.
Those are the kinds of results that stick with you. Kolek was 2-of-8 from the field and scored 7 points. He turned it over six times in that one, too, but he didn’t have the same avalanche of positive stats with which to bury those mistakes.
Marquette made it clear that memory was fresh, even if it occurred more than 370 days ago. Marquette has not reached the Sweet 16 since 2013, when Vander Blue was the team’s star. These Golden Eagles had won only one NCAA game entering this weekend.
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“Yeah, even for this group we feel like it's been a long time coming,” Kolek said. “That first year didn't go how we wanted. Second year certainly didn't go how we wanted, and then coming back this year we had a vengeance. I told the guys before the game, this moment has been in our nightmares and we're not running from it anymore.”
