Women's Basketball: Creighton 82, Marquette 60

Marquette's bid for their first three game winning streak of the season fell apart on Sunday afternoon when they lost to Creighton, 82-60.

It was bad news pretty much from the word "go" for Marquette.  Taylor Johnson hit one of Creighton's nine first half three-pointers for the first bucket of the game for the Jays, and the lead just slowly grew from there.  It wasn't a 10 point margin until Brianna Rollerson sent home a bucket at the 8:27 mark, and the lead wouldn't stay above double digits until the 5:17 mark of the first half.  M.C. McGrory canned the first of three unanswered triples that jammed the Bluejay margin from a scant eight points all the way up to 17 with 3:21 left before intermission.

The lead was 17 at the break after a Lauren Works triple, one of three on the day for the freshman from Lincoln, Nebraska.  After halftime, Marquette would only manage to take three points off that margin when they scored the first three points of the half.  Creighton answered that by going on an 11-0 run to bust the game wide open and give them a 58-33 lead.  Marquette managed just eight made field goals in the second half, although they did support that with a 13-16 effort from the charity stripe.

The shocking part about this whole thing?  Marquette lost because they were colder than ice in Omaha.  The Golden Eagles committed just nine turnovers in the entire game, and only three in the second half while Creighton was running away with the game.  If you showed me the final score on this game, I would have taken the over on 20.5 turnovers in the game for sure.  Instead, it was just a 32% shooting night that doomed the Golden Eagles.  Creighton wasn't much better, as they only shook the twine on 39% of their shots.

Cristina Bigica led Marquette with 12 points, but it was Arlesia Morse with the impressive performance of the night, recording 11 points and 11 rebounds for her third career double-double and the second one this season.  Marissa Janning and Alexis Akin-Otiko both had 17 point outings for Creighton, while Brianna Rollerson had 12 points and 15 rebounds, including six on the offensive end.

The loss drops Marquette to 4-13 in Big East action this season, while Creighton jumps up to 9-7 with the Senior Day victory.

Up Next: It's time for the regular season finale.  Both of Marquette's next two games will take place in Chicago, as they'll take on DePaul (22-7, 14-3 Big East) on Sunday, March 1.  That game will be on CBS Sports Network, while Marquette's next game after that will be their first round contest in the Big East tournament on March 7.