How will Marquette's Ben Gold build on his best career performance?
The high ceiling of Marquette men’s basketball big man Ben Gold was on display with a five-second burst in the Golden Eagles’ 82-52 victory over Providence on Tuesday night.
The 6-foot-11 junior grabbed a rebound and … well, let the understated New Zealand native matter-of-factly tell the rest of it.
“Looked for an outlet to one of the guards,” Gold said. “Honestly, don’t remember if I saw anyone. There might have been one of them there.
“But I look up and I just see a free lane to the hoop, so I’m, like, I’ll be aggressive and I’ll push it up the court and we’ll get into the offense. I kept going and I came up the court and I realized no one’s picking me up, so I just kept going. Saw a guy rotating and thought, well, I got to get around him. Yeah, pretty simple.”
That undersells Gold’s ball-handling ability, the extra gear he found in the open court and the dexterity to drop in a sweet left-handed layup.
MU teammate Stevie Mitchell felt that the play needed a more emphatic punchline. The sequence even got MU legend Dwyane Wade out of his seat.
“The crowd got louder for that one than for your dunk,” Mitchell said. “That was a nice move, I wish I had that.”
It’s easy to watch Gold make a play like that and wonder why he can’t do something like that every game. He’s been up-and-down this season but the hope for the Golden Eagles heading into Saturday’s game at Georgetown is that Gold’s confidence will be soaring after a career-best 17-point performance.
He needed that after three points and zero boards against Villanova. He also had a two-game stretch in early February in which he didn’t pull down a single rebound.
“I think what’s occurred with Ben the last several games is awesome for his development,” MU head coach Shaka Smart said. “Because he can look in the mirror and say ‘You know what? I’m a good player and I’ve dealt with some challenges. I can play with any of these guys. My teammates and coaches believe in me.’
“Nobody takes this the wrong way, but we don’t really care what anybody else thinks. We don’t. We believe in Ben Gold and we believe in every guy on our team. We actually enjoy when we get doubted.”
Shaka Smart pumps up Ben Gold's confidence
Smart has always tried to pour confidence into Gold. To his credit, Gold has handled the ebbs and flows with equanimity.
When the big man is hitting shots, he fully unlocks MU’s five-out offense.
He knocked down 3 of 5 from long range against Providence after a 4-for-17 showing over his previous seven games.
“Obviously I had been struggling a little bit the last couple games,” Gold said. “But it’s just staying with it. Making sure I’m doing the same thing every single day. I’m putting the work in.
“And I see it paying off. Whether it’s in practice, in games. But there’s a little sigh of relief to see it happen in games a little bit. I know it’s there.”
Smart thinks that Gold should embrace the ride, even if it comes with criticism from fans.
“I always tell him you got to wear it like a badge of honor,” Smart said. “That’s hard to do. We’ve got a group of that are extremely conscientious. They are very much pleasers. They want to make everybody happy. They want to win. They don’t want to do the wrong thing.
"But when you go in a game, you can’t always necessarily play to not do the wrong thing. You got to go after doing the right thing. And if one or two or five percent of your energy or attention is on avoiding the wrong thing or making a mistake. Not even the wrong thing. Missing a shot, getting scored on when you play good defense. Then that puts you on your heels a little bit.”
Gold was playing free when he went coast-to-coast for that layup at Fiserv Forum, and Smart was as impressed as Mitchell.
“That might be the highest-degree of difficulty layup that I’ve seen this year,” he said.
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