WASHBURN – Wanting to get back on the nice warm bus before it got cold on a chilly and blustery Tuesday night may not have been the Marquette Crusaders’ lone motivating factor in determining the way they played, but they sure didn’t waste any time getting back to it.
Against a young but respectable Lowpoint-Washburn team, the Cru used red-hot shooting from the field, solid defense and tough work on the boards to breeze to an easy 75-42 running-clock victory over the Wildcats, getting them back on that warm bus in scarcely more than an hour after the opening tip.
Marquette connected on 8 of its first 10 tries from the field, 12 of its 17 shots in the first quarter and 20 of 29 in the first half, allowing the Cru to compile leads of 11-2 and 25-4 in the opening period and 36-5 early in the second.
Charlie Mullen led the superbly balanced MA attach with 14 points, followed by Tommy Durdan with 12, Griffin Walker 10 and Krew Bond, Logan Nelson and Denver Trainor with nine points apiece.
Carson Zellers aded seven points and Pete McGrath a team-high six rebounds to the free-flowing attack that lifted the visitors’ record to 14-5, 5-0 in the Tri-County Conference.
The Wildcats, a senior-less team that got a team-best 14 points from freshman Evan Schumacher, drops to 0-4 in the league but a solid 11-8 overall.
“That first half. Man, if we could bottle that up and bring it out every night,” Marquette coach Todd Hopkins said. “In the second half, we didn’t play as well, but when you get a lead like that, that can happen. But we shot the ball real well, the guys moved the ball around well, they played hard and got the job done, in the conference, on the road. We all played pretty well. Charlie knocked some shots down and that’s good to see because we’re gonna need him.
“We wanted to come out here, play with confidence, get on them and try to throw the knockout punch early and we did. Now we have to get ready for [another Tri-County game at Henry-Senachwine] on Friday.”
Back-to-back 3 pointers from Nelson and Durdan got the Cru started and they kept going by sharing the ball so unselfishly that 10 different players scored in the first two quarters.
After a basket by Clayton Grebner got the hosts on the board, Marquette rolled off 19 of the next 21 points (eight of those points by Mullen) and 30 of the next 33, capped by consecutive converted steals by Durdan, for a 36-5 advantage early in the second.
It was at that point that someone besides Grebner scored, on a fast-break bucket by Baylor Steffen with 6:01 showing in the second quarter.
A pair of 3s by Trainor and another by Zellers in the second quarter helped balloon the lead to 54-11 in the final minute of the half.
Marquette went into the break shooting 68.9% and with a 22-11 edge on the glass.
The Wildcats showed life in the third period behind Schumacher, who had earlier in the night netted 21 points in the JV game, but his six points in that quarter was by far too little, too late.
A Bond basket with 4:26 left in the third made it 63-22 and insured the running clock.
“Our kids played a pretty good second half all-around” L-W coach Zach Weber said. “We’re definitely a scrappy team, getting after the ball, creating turnovers, getting better shots on the break … but we’re a young team that just hasn’t put it together yet against teams that are little bit bigger, a little bit stronger, a little bit more physical and a bit more experienced than them.
“We’re absolutely making progress. It’s tough, asking a lot of sophomores and freshmen to play two games for us each night, but we already have the most wins the program’s had in the last decade. We’re getting there a little at a time.”