Smashing: Marquette 95, Long Island 58

It was 5-0 Marquette after 90 seconds on Thursday night at Fiserv Forum and with that, the game was over. I’m kind of overstating that but also I very much am not, as MU rolled easily to a 95-58 win over Long Island University. The Golden Eagles are now 3-1 on the season.

LIU would get their first points of the game from Jacob Johnson to pull within five points on the next trip down the court, and that’s the closest they would get the rest of the way. Marquette busted the game open with a 10-2 run capped by a David Joplin three-pointer that made it a 21-8 ball game at the 12:47 mark, and the lead would never go back to single digits again. The Golden Eagles never really went on a true gamebreaking tear in this one, in fact, KenPom’s probability graph shows MU’s only run of the game as 25-4.... but that stretched from just before there were seven minutes left in the first half to just past the 17 minute mark of the second half. Yeah, 25-4 is a lot of points all in one direction.... but also it took Marquette longer than 10 minutes across halftime to do it.

Anyway, it was 58-25 at the end of the run.

Here’s another way to look at it: With 15:02 left in the second half, a foul by Olivier-Maxence Prosper prompted the under-16 minute timeout. Head coach Shaka Smart subbed his entire starting lineup out of the game for Sean Jones, Chase Ross, David Joplin, Zach Wrightsil, and Ben Gold. The score was 58-30 at the time.

They subbed out, en masse, for the starters, at the 10:38 mark.

Marquette was now up 32 points after Gold drained a three-pointer.

Keeyan Itejere subbed in at the 5:21 mark of the second half and played the rest of the way for his third and longest appearance of the season. He scored on both shots he attempted and pulled in a rebound.

I’m out of things to say about this game because nothing important happened at any point.

OMax Prosper finished with a game high 31 points on 11-for-12 shooting, including a perfect 3-for-3 from behind the arc..... and he did it in just 20 minutes. Kam Jones (13), David Joplin (12), and Oso Ighodaro (11) all got to double digits in points. Tyler Kolek’s assists averaged dropped because he only had eight here.... but part of that is 1) he played 21 minutes and 2) Ighodaro had six helpers. Joplin had a team high seven rebounds to go with three assists as well.

Up Next: Marquette packs their bags to head to Florida on Monday. They’ll be down in Fort Myers for the Rocket Mortgage Tip-Off where they will face Mississippi State in the semifinals. Tipoff on FS1 is scheduled for 7:30pm Central time. The Bulldogs are 4-0 on the year after beating South Dakota 79-42 on Thursday night, but Marquette will easily be their toughest test of the season so far.