Business As Usual: #14 Marquette 96, Seton Hall 60

Seven players scored at least five points and four had at least 12 as the #14 ranked Marquette Golden Eagles romped their way through 40 minutes against the Seton Hall Pirates, winning by a final score of 96-60. With the win, Marquette is now a perfect 6-0 in Big East play. Thanks to a triple overtime victory by Providence against Butler, Marquette is now the only unbeaten team in the Big East. Remember: they’ve been doing this without All-American guard Allazia Blockton, who has played just eight minutes since the league slate started due to an ankle injury.

For the first five minutes, it looked like we were about to get an interesting game for all of the Milwaukee Public Schools students in attendance. MU started out with an 8-0 lead, but Seton Hall immediately rallied, cutting the lead down to three at one point on a Victoria Cardaci triple.

And then it happened.

Leading 16-12, the Golden Eagles ripped off a 14-0 run kicked off by an and-1 layup by Danielle King and capped by a three from Natisha Hiedeman. The lead was now 30-12. A pair of freebies from Amani Wilborn pushed the margin to 19, and a three by Isabelle Spingola, her second of the quarter while coming off the bench, made it 20 at 35-15.

And there was still 44 seconds left before the end of the first.

Officially, the lead was 18 when the second quarter started. That was also as close as Seton Hall would get the rest of the day. What else do you need to know about what happened here? Shoutout to Altia Anderson for her bucket with 2:05 to go that kicked the margin up to 40 for a brief moment.

To the extent that Allazia Blockton’s chances of winning Player of the Year dwindles a little more every time she misses a game, Natisha Hiedeman is doing her damnedest to make sure that trophy ends up in Milwaukee anyway. She had a game high 28 points, on a completely stupid 8-for-15 shooting performance, which included going 5-for-9 from long range. That’s an effective field goal percentage of 70%. When she wasn't burning the nets down, she just barely missed a double-double with nine rebounds, added four assists, and came up with three steals, too. I mean, DAMN.

Meanwhile, Erika Davenport is all “Yeah, well, I had a 12/10 double-double and did it in just 17 minutes.”

How about some highlights, courtesy of the Big East Digital Network and GoMarquette.com?

Up Next: The Golden Eagles will host St. John’s on Sunday afternoon with just enough time for everyone to make their way from the men’s game at Fiserv Forum up to the McGuire Center. The Red Storm lost 73-64 to DePaul on Friday night for their fourth straight defeat.