The Quick and Dirty: Creighton 77, Marquette 70

After a most unpleasant whoopin' at the hands of Xavier on Tuesday, YOUR Golden Eagles (all seven of 'em, as Matt Carlino sat out once again due to a concussion) went down to Omaha to try to right the ship against the only team with a worse Big East record - the Creighton Blue Jays.  Unfortunately, things didn't quite go to script.

The first half opened with Marquette grabbing a quick 2-0 lead, on a Luke Fischer basket in the paint. That's worth mentioning because that ended up being MU's only lead of the entire game.  The rest of the first half was an outside shooting clinic put on by Rick Kreklow and the Blue Jays.  The Jays went 7-11 from behind the arc in the first half.  Kreklow was responsible for five those seven makes.  Basically wherever he was on the court (or even from out of bounds) Kreklow was draining triples.  He ended up with a career-high 19 points on the afternoon.

Marquette tried to keep it close, but the Jays seemed to be perpetually up by eight.  The most memorable moment of the half for the Golden Eagles came on a beautifully executed, side out of bounds play, that resulted in an awesome alley-oop dunk for Fischer.  Hopefully the coaching staff can bottle that one for some day when we need a basket and there's only 0.4 seconds on the clock.

In the second half, the Marquette defense was ready to stop the 3-pointers.  Unfortunately, this resulted in easy, inside baskets for guys like Will Artino and Geoff Groselle, who each ended up with 12 points.  Despite Creighton's success offensively, MU was able to hang around - always around that 8-point margin.  Occasionally they were able to get the deficit under eight, but it was usually short lived.  A mini-spurt, led by 8 quick points from Steve Taylor, got the Golden Eagles within five with 12 minutes to play.  But that was followed up with allowing a Creighton offensive rebound and put back, off a missed free throw, and the lead was right back to eight.  Back to back 3-pointers by Sandy Cohen and Duane Wilson - who led all scorers with 26 points - got MU back to within six, with about 8 minutes to play.  But a costly turnover, and two Creighton lay-ups later, the lead was back up 10.  And so it went for the whole afternoon.  Marquette was never really out of it, but was never really in it either.  In the end they drop to 3-10 in Big East play, and join Creighton in the league cellar.

The Golden Eagles get the week off, but things don't get any easier when they return to the court.  The 7th ranked Villanova Wildcats visit the BC next Saturday afternoon. Until then, this is your post-game "lick your wounds" thread.