Marquette X’s out Xavier in NCAA

              

CLEVELAND—Marquette shut down Tu Holloway and shot down Xavier’s hope for another deep tournament run.Darius Johnson-Odom scored 19 points, Jimmy Butler had 15 and Marquette squashed Xavier’s bid for a fourth straight round of 16 appearance with a 66-55 win Friday night.The 11th-seeded Golden Eagles (21-14) will play Indiana State or Syracuse on Sunday in the East Regional.The sixth-seeded Musketeers (24-8) and Michigan State were the only two programs to reach the round of 16 each of the last three tournaments.Holloway, the Atlantic 10 player of the year, missed his first seven shots and scored only five points.Marquette led by 13 in the first half and pushed back a small Xavier spurt that sliced the lead to single digits. Holloway, Xavier’s leading scorer at 20.1 points, was compared a day earlier to Connecticut’s Kemba Walker and BYU’s Jimmer Fredette. He played not at all like his usual self, much less like two of college’s greatest scoring stars.He was 0 for 7 until he swished a 3-pointer at the 12:08 mark in the second half that, briefly, made it feel as though Xavier was coming back to life.Instead, it was merely a blip in what turned into a relatively easy win for the Golden Eagles. And it was Holloway’s only bucket of the game.The game ended with “We Are [clap, clap] Marquette!” booming through the arena. The Golden Eagles, one of 11 Big East teams to make the field, emptied their bench and Johnson-Odom walked off the court smiling and pointing at all the Marquette fans who made the trip.