Home sweet home.
Marquette returned to the Bradley Center for just the third time this month and promptly blew out the visiting Seton Hall Pirates, 89-76. The Golden Eagles built a 20 point lead twice in the second half, but the feisty Pirates ripped off a 20 to 5 run tha cut the lead to just five with less than nine minutes to play. Still, Marquette weathered the storm and pulled away for the convincing victory.
Jerel McNeal led MU with 22 points, 10 assists and seven rebounds. Wesley Matthews also had 22 points, while Ousmane Barro poured in 13 points, all in the second half. Dominic James had 11 points. Marquette outscored the Pirates 38-2 in fast break points tonight -- incredible. MU shot 58% from the floor, including 41% from deep.
You've gotta wonder why Seton Hall head coach Bobby Gonzalez insisted on applying full court pressure for most of the night -- MU shredded those sets routinely. In the post-game intervew on the Seton Hall radio network, Gonzalez said that Marquette has "a special perimeter" and that McNeal might be the best guard he's seen all year. Gonzalez noted that "We could not turn them over. Their guards are so good with the ball."
With the victory the Golden Eagles move to 18-4 on the season and 5-2 in the Big East. The Golden Eagles travel to Tampa to take on South Florida this Sunday at 1pm CST. The Bulls clobbered Rutgers tonight, 62-40.
Post game interviews recapped by MUScoop.
Game photos from MUScoop.
Here's the AP recap.
Here is the box score.
Here is Todd Rosiak's recap.
MarquetteHoops recap is here. Nice job by Andrew Sharos.
Just an outstanding game by McNeal. Fast break points by Marquette I believe were 32-2 or something like that. Just nuts. They definitely hit a lull for about five minutes there in the second half letting Hall back in...of course, 14-20 shooting by Hall during that time helps. But, like you said, MU weathered the storm and didn't panic. They continued to punch away and get points.
ReplyDeleteGood all around game for Wesley too. Went to the hoop strong again. Ous was great in the second half. When he graduates, they'll need to put a #41 on the lower left post for him on senior night. He's scored 80-90% of his points from the same 2-foot spot on the paint.
Bring on SFU. If they can win these next three...all winnable games...the final month should be really, really exciting.
Marquette is 5-2 in the Big East.
ReplyDeleteWhen Seton Hall came back from 20 down to only 5 down, Cube, Fitz and Burke were in the game. Hence, I think Crean wanted to see if we could maintain the lead when only 2 of the 4 regular starters were in. Guess we couldn't maintain the lead, so that is something we need to work on.
ReplyDeleteMarquette is #11 in this week's SI Power Rankings.
ReplyDeleteYou can read about them here:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/luke_winn/01/25/power.rankings/2.html