The Marquette girls basketball team, which held a 10-point lead over La Salle-Peru with five minutes to play, held off a late push and potential game-winning shot at the final buzzer by the Cavaliers to hold on for a 56-55 victory on Saturday at Bader Gymnasium in Ottawa.

Marquette held a three-point advantage with seven seconds left, but La Salle-Peru’s Margaret Boudreau scored on a putback and was fouled. Her free throw rimmed out, the Cavs grabbed the offensive rebound, but the final shot was no good.

Marquette’s Kaitlyn Davis scored a game-high 26 points, including a free throw with 26 seconds left that proved to be the winning margin. Hunter Hopkins had 12 points, six rebounds and four steals, Emily Ryan Adair added 10 points and Madison Kozlowski seven points and four rebounds.

“Early in the season turnovers were a huge problem for us, but the past four or five games we’ve taken care of the ball better and in turn have been right in games,” Marquette coach Eric Price said, his squad now 4-12. “I thought despite us being undersized we rebounded the ball pretty well today.

“Sometimes holding a lead late in a game doesn’t always look pretty and today was one of those games. But we got four big free throws from Madison Kozloski a couple more from Kaitlyn Davis to help us hang on to the lead. This was a nice win for us and hopefully we can carry this momentum into next week.”

Marquette led 22-17 after the opening quarter, 32-28 at halftime and 44-37 heading to the fourth.

Down eight with just over a minute to play, a drive and free throw by Drew Depenbrock, plus a hoop and two makes from the charity stripe by Bri Ruppert closed the gap to 55-53.

Davis hit the back end of two free throws to set up the final seconds of the game.

“I thought we did a good job of getting into the lane for layups or got to the free throw line, probably the best we’ve done with that all season,” Davis said. “Like almost every game we play we talk about how important rebounding is and today I thought we did a pretty good job. I also thought we did a pretty good job in our defensive press; we were able to force a few turnovers and turn them into points while also not making many turnovers ourselves.

“Hopefully this game will be a huge confidence boost for us as a team. We’ve had some ups and downs so far but today should show all of us that we can be a pretty good team when we play like we did.”

Ruppert led the Cavaliers with 19 points and 15 rebounds, while Emma Jereb added 11 points and Alexus Hines chipped in nine points.

L-P outshot the hosts (40%-38%) and held a 36-28 margin in rebounds, but lost the turnover battle 15-13 and struggled from the free-throw line.

“We were 10-of-21 for the game in free throws, 4-of-11 in the fourth quarter and missed a bunch of layups in key moments,” La Salle-Peru coach Adam Spencer said. “When you look at the final score, we just didn’t take advantage of a bunch of chances we had and it cost us. We just struggled in a lot of areas today.

“We struggled against Marquette’s (full-court) press and we just didn’t adjust. We had times where we broke the pressure well and got layups. Then the next couple of possessions we’d turn the ball over. It’s frustrating, but we’ll just keep working on getting better.

Marquette has home games against Newark and Henry-Senachwine on Wednesday and Thursday. L-P is at Midland on Monday and at Rochelle on Thursday.