Marquette Stuns No. 1 Villanova and Everything is Right With the World

#MUBB Game Highlights: Marquette 74, #1 Villanova 72. pic.twitter.com/I9HDygVnYk
— MarquetteMBB (@MarquetteMBB) January 25, 2017

For anyone associated with Marquette University, this morning is all seashells and balloons, malts and shakes, bare feet and wet grass, sweater weather and skirts in the wind. And also court-storming. Beautiful, beautiful court-storming. Hordes of young folk, and even an old or two, rushing the floor at the Bradley Center. Their basketball team had just defeated the top team in college basketball, and so they were doing the right thing.

Beating the No. 1 team in the country might be a bit ho-hum for your Kentuckys, Dukes, UCLAs, and so forth, but for those of us in basketball's big, soft middle it's…what's the word? Awesome. Marquette University, the Jesuit institution that sent Dwyane Wade to the NBA and your humble servant out into the sports-blogging world—Quod erat terribilis—has a proud basketball tradition that includes the 1977 National Championship, and they have beaten the nation's top-ranked team once. Legendary coach Al McGuire never did it. Only the Wade's 2003 "triple-double in the Elite Eight" squad ever knocked off the top cat, when they beat Kentucky to go to the Final Four.

Anyway, now it's two. On Tuesday night, Marquette upset Villanova 74-72 in rather spectacular fashion.

At just under the 6:00 mark in the second half, the Golden Eagles were down a baker's dozen against the Wildcats, who promptly went ice cold from the field on a relatively balmy 34-degree night in Milwaukee.

Marquette snapped a nine-game losing streak to Nova by playing small ball and closing out the game on a 19-4 run. Fueled by the well-traveled and well-tatted senior sharpshooting guard Katin Reinhardt and junior guard Duane Wilson, a former program cornerstone who has mostly been lost in the shuffle this season, Marquette shot nearly 70 percent in the second half. If you've never caught the Golden Eagles act, they launch, and make, a lot of threes, ranking second only to UCLA in the major conferences. They are also rather Lilliputian and have the 131st-ranked defense in the country, but they clamped down last night as Villanova inexplicably decided to settle for triples, which they shot at a 17.6 percent clip. The win comes on the heels of the Golden Eagles knocking off No. 7 Creighton in Omaha, which you know what who cares:

MARQUETTE BEAT THE #1 TEAM IN THE COUNTRY. STORM THE FUCKING COURT, KIDS! WE'RE ALL BEHIND YOU! FOR GOD'S SAKE, WOJO GET THE GUYS OUT OF THE DOGPILE!

DOWN GOES NO.1! COURT STORMED. UPSET! Marquette defeats No.1 Villanova 74-72 on @FS1. #BIGEASThttps://t.co/3FQxRbiIzv
— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) January 25, 2017

One more time, what was it again alumnus emeritus Tommy Boy?

Yes it was.