Marquette Jumps All Over Fairleigh Dickinson

Sometimes basketball is easy to figure out.

I don’t mean “Marquette women’s basketball blew Fairleigh Dickinson’s doors off, 75-47, clearly MU is the better team” easy to figure out. I’m talking about exactly how the Golden Eagles went about beating the Knights in both teams’ 2022-23 season opener.

Check this out:

10:00 remaining in the first quarter til 5:50 — Marquette outscores FDU 6-0 on a trio of buckets from Liza Karlen.

10:00 remaining in the second quarter til 5:00 — Marquette outscores FDU 14-0, powered by 10 points from Karlen.

10:00 remaining in the third quarter til 4:15 — Marquette outscores FDU 12-0, featuring nine points from Jordan King.

10:00 remaining in the fourth quarter til 6:30 — Marquette outscores FDU 8-0, including two baskets from freshman Kenzie Hare.

That’s 40-0 Marquette in 18:25 of game time, and y’know what? It was actually more time than that, I was just rounding off to easy to use five second spots. That’s how you win a ballgame, and do you know how I know this?

Fairleigh Dickinson outscored Marquette 47-35 in the other 21:35! That’s more than half the game! Marquette got beat in a collective amount of time that was more than half of this game, but the Golden Eagles did so much work coming out of the gate in each and every quarter of the contest, it did not matter. MU was up 13 at the half in front of over 3,000 people, 2.800 of which were very excited Milwaukee area school kids, and never led by fewer than 15 in the second half after Jordan King broke the ice on the second half with a steal and a bucket. Karlen pushed the lead back above 20, 59-38, on a bucket with 9:07 to go in the game and MU never led by fewer than 20 the rest of the way.

The early portion of the game was dominated by Karlen as you can tell from that 16 points in those first half runs. Believe it or not, Karlen would only score one other time in the game to finish with 18 points, but she added 12 rebounds, four blocks, and two steals while going 1-for-3 from long range, so it’s all good. King finished with 24 points, a new career high for the senior guard. She was dynamic all across the floor, going 8-for-15 from the field on a collection of drives, pull-ups, and long range buckets as she went 2-for-4 from behind the three-point line. King also added three rebounds, eight assists, and tied a career best with six steals to keep the Golden Eagles flowing up and down the floor.

You almost feel bad for Chloe Marotta, who finished the first game of her super senior year with “only” 15 points, five rebounds, an assists, a steal, and a block.

Four of Marquette’s newcomers debuted in this game, with Nia Clark and Emily La Chapell getting the start from head coach Megan Duffy. Neither woman had a great day, as they combined to go 1-for-12 from the field, but they also combined for eight rebounds and four assists. Kenzie Hare had seven points in 18 minutes off the bench, while Charia Smith subbed in with a minute to go but didn’t get into the scorebook otherwise. The only freshman to not play was Nique Mayo, so we’ll see what’s up with her as the season goes along, I guess.

You wanna watch some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and FloHoops?

Up Next: Marquette is off until the weekend, when they’ll play a pair of games to finalize preparation for the Battle 4 Atlantis. It will be Holy Cross at the McGuire Center at 7pm on Friday night, followed by Milwaukee at 2pm on Sunday afternoon. The Crusaders visit Merrimack for their opener on Monday night before coming to Milwaukee, while the Panthers will host Wisconsin and host Loyola-Chicago between now and Sunday.