Marquette Outlasts WVU

By John Antonik for WVUsports.com
January 01, 2011 02:10 PM

West Virginia's John Flowers, left, scrambles for a loose ball with Marquette's Jimmy Butler during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game Saturday, Jan. 1, 2011, in Milwaukee. Marquette won 79-74.

AP photo

MILWAUKEE – Jae Crowder’s career-best 29 points and his late steal helped Marquette to a 79-74 victory over West Virginia early Saturday afternoon at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee.

With Marquette leading 75-74, Crowder’s steal at the top of the key with 35 seconds left led to an intentional foul by Casey Mitchell for grabbing Crowder’s jersey to give Marquette possession of the basketball following two Crowder free throws. Crowder sank one of two from the line and Jimmy Butler added another free throw to give the Golden Eagles a 77-74 lead.

“We just didn’t do a very good job at the end,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins.

Two more Butler free throws following a missed 2-point shot by Truck Bryant with 13 seconds left enabled Marquette to come away with a five point victory.

“We gave Crowder a career and at the end of the game you can’t let (Darius) Johnson-Odom shoot the ball and we let him shoot the ball,” said Huggins. “We’re supposed to be marking him and nobody marked him.”

West Virginia (8-4, 0-2) fell behind 9-0 to start the game and trailed by 11, 28-17, with 5:57 remaining in the first half before fighting its way back into the game. An 11-2 Mountaineer run cut Marquette’s lead to 30-28 and they trailed 37-34 at halftime.

In the second half, West Virginia tied the score six times and the lead changed 10 different times. The Mountaineers’ biggest lead was four, 57-53, following a Bryant 3 with 11:05 left and West Virginia’s last lead came with 1:48 remaining when Bryant’s layup gave it a 74-73 advantage.

But Marquette answered when Chris Otule’s stick-back dunk following a missed 3 by Dwight Buycks made it 75-74 and then some missed opportunities on the offensive end of the floor by the Mountaineers enabled the Golden Eagles (10-4, 1-0) to pick up their first conference win of the season.

Once again West Virginia was beaten decisively on the glass (34-24) and also allowed its opponent to shoot at least 50 percent from the floor, Marquette hitting 52.6 percent of its field goal tries for the game. The second half has been particularly difficult for the Mountaineers, West Virginia permitting St. John’s to shoot 76.5 percent from the floor on Wednesday and Marquette to shoot 64 percent today.

“We just did a poor job in the last 10-15 minutes of defending them,” said Huggins. “At first we got too spread out and we got that fixed and then they started screening people in the zone and doing things, which is fine - all it is is a bump. It’s like playing man to man. It’s just a switch and we didn’t do any of that.”

In addition to Crowder’s career-high 29, Marquette got 21 from Johnson-Odom and 10 from Butler.

Bryant scored a season-high 25 for the Mountaineers. Kevin Jones added 17 points and eight rebounds while Deniz Kilicli and Casey Mitchell contributed 14 points each.

“We played hard and we competed so much better than what we’ve competed but at the end of the day you have to compete and you have to execute and we didn’t execute down the stretch,” said Huggins.

Huggins chose to play stretches with point guards Bryant and Joe Mazzulla in the game at the same time.

“I thought playing Joe and Truck together was good,” said Huggins. “Now we’re like everyone else – we actually have two guys that can dribble and it makes the game a little easier.”

Marquette was 14 of 21 from the free throw line while West Virginia got to the line just seven times, making all seven.

Senior forward John Flowers had another rough outing, fouling out for the second consecutive time in conference play on Saturday against Marquette without making a field goal. Flowers had just 4 points and three rebounds in last Wednesday’s loss to St. John’s.

West Virginia has now dug itself into a hole starting 0-2 in Big East play for the first time since 2002. The Mountaineers remain on the road to face DePaul Tuesday night in Chicago.

“We’ve got to go to DePaul now and win and we’ve got to go to Georgetown and win; we need to start racking up some wins,” said Huggins.

“We’ve got two coming here on the road and the reality is, if we come out of that 2-2 – and we were hoping to be 4-0 – but if you come out of it 2-2 and you kind of survive it a little bit,” Huggins said. “Then we’ve just got to go take care of business at home and take care of business in the non-conference games.

“We’ve still got plenty of opportunities to get quality wins,” added Huggins.

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