The Quick & The Rowsey: Marquette 85, Creighton 81

Hey, wherever you are right now, go look out a window.

There’s a very distinct chance that you’ll see Andrew Rowsey let fly on a three-pointer that will go through the rim at the Bradley Center in downtown Milwaukee.

The redshirt senior from Virginia was WHITE HOT against Creighton on Saturday, closing out the home end of his collegiate career and the Bradley Center itself by scoring 26 points on 8-15 shooting, including 6-of-10 from long range, as Marquette defeated the Bluejays, 85-81. Marquette is now 9-9 in Big East action, and 18-12 overall. As of right now, Saturday evening at 6:30pm Central, the T-Rank Bracketology has Marquette IN the NCAA tournament, although just barely.

When I say that Andrew Rowsey was hitting from long range, I mean he was HITTING FROM LONG RANGE.

First this one, to put Marquette up 4 with 3:20 to go.

LOOK WHERE HE IS. HE WAS ON THE AL MCGUIRE COURT LOGO. WHAT THE HELL.

and then this one

We’re missing a clip of the second of THREE STRAIGHT ABSURDLY LONG triples by Rowsey, but it was a straight away shot and from what sure felt like he had his heels on the the MU center court logo.

Before Rowsey let fly from the Al McGuire Court logo, Marquette was up 1, 70-69. When he was done with his trio of triples, Marquette was up six, 79-73, with exactly two minutes left. It was exactly what Marquette needed at exactly the right time. That six point margin would be as high as it would get, but it was enough for the Golden Eagles to keep the Bluejays at arm’s length the rest of the way. They would trim it to just two points on a Marcus Foster three-pointer, but there was four seconds left. A foul attempt on Markus Howard ensued, and that was that.

Rowsey wasn’t the only one going nuts, by the way. The entire team shot 10-of-12 from behind the arc after the break, and Rowsey was only five of those attempts. Markus Howard was a perfect 4-for-4, Jamal Cain dropped in his only attempt, and Sam Hauser split a pair. All of that helped to combat the fact that Marquette was down by eight at the half, and trailed by as many as 11 early in the second half.

In other words, this could have gone a lot worse. It really looked like it was going to when MU fell behind by 13 late in the first half. Marquette had already mounted one rally, briefly taking the lead after being down eight early on. It was tied at 27 on a Rowsey jumper with 5:50 to go in the half, but a Toby Hegner triple got the Jays on a roll, and at the 1:36 mark, Khyri Thomas finished off a personal 5-0 run on either side of a Rowsey turnover to stake the Jays to that 13 point lead.

Seemed bad, but a Hauser 3 and a Howard layup right before the horn made it manageable.... until Creighton opened up the second half on a 6-0 run over the first three-plus minutes. The rest, as they say, was history.

Rowsey’s big day wasn’t just limited to scoring. He had a near miss on a triple-double, adding eight rebounds and eight assists to his stat sheet. Howard was electric, scoring 25 points to continue to extend his sophomore scoring record. Along the way, he became the sixth Marquette player to reach 1,000 career points in just two seasons, and he is the first sophomore to accomplish that feat. Pretty neat that it came on his 19th birthday, too.

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

Up Next: Well, we don’t actually know. In fact, we don’t even actually know when. Depending on the outcome of Saturday night’s Seton Hall-Butler game, Marquette will either play on Wednesday night as the #7 seed in the Big East tournament, or on Thursday night as the #6 seed. It’ll either be DePaul or Providence, respectively, so keep your eyes peeled for an official announcement.