The Quick & The Dirty: Marquette 83, DePaul 58

Marquette shook off a rough start to finish the first half on a 32-9 run and never look back against DePaul on Saturday afternoon. The Golden Eagles finished up with an 83-58 victory over the Blue Demons and move to 3-2 in Big East action and 12-5 overall. DePaul drops to 8-10 with a a 1-4 record in league play.

Not only was the story of the game that massive run by Marquette over the final 8:46 of the first half, the story was Marquette’s three point shooting. The Golden Eagles went 12-20 on long range bombs before intermission, including making nine straight to close the half. Andrew Rowsey scored 19 points - more than any DePaul player would have at the end of the game - in 13 first half minutes on 7-of-8 overall shooting and 5-of-6 action behind the arc. In fact, it was Marquette’s bench going haywire with the offense, with Duane Wilson going 2-for-2 behind the arc and Katin Reinhardt going 3-for-3 from behind the line as well.

Things quieted way down for Marquette in the second half as they only made one of their seven long ball attempts. However, they shot 61% overall after the break and never let DePaul get any closer than 18, and even that came with 17:18 left in the game.

Rowsey and Reinhardt ended up as the only Golden Eagles in double digits, scoring 24 and 19 points respectively. Sam Hauser only scored five points, but he registered a game high nine rebounds and a game high three blocks to make up for it. Haanif Cheatham, who was unfairly criticized by the peanut gallery at halftime, finished with six points, six rebounds and four assist with nary a turnover to be seen.

How about some highlights, courtesy of Fox Sports Wisconsin and GoMarquette.com?

Here’s the good news: Marquette won the two obviously winnable games on their schedule to start the season, beating both DePaul and Georgetown at home. They split with Seton Hall and took a whupping at the hands of Villanova out in Philly. That’s better than I expected would happen at this point of the season, which means MU is playing with house money right now.....

Up Next: ..... which is great because things are about to get really, really difficult. Marquette will be back in action at 11am Central time on Monday to kick off the Big East Marathon. They’ll be visiting Butler, which is ranked #12 in the country and just beat #15 Xavier today. After that: #8 Creighton in Omaha on Saturday, then #3 Villanova comes to Milwaukee the following Tuesday. This will likely not be fun. If Marquette can steal one win out of the next three, that’s good. If not, no big deal, as winnable games are stacking up like firewood after that.