MU Rolls Centenary

As expected, Marquette won big over the Centenary Gentlemen (great mascot, by the way) on Saturday at the Bradley Center in a 81-52 victory.  MU jumped out to a quick 8-0 lead and never looked back.  The golden eagles are now 8-3 on the year, and have two more games before conference play begins.

First the bad news, then the good news.  3-point shooting again was poor, 29% for the game.  Darius Johnson-Odom shot an "impressive" 1-5 from long range.  I'm not sure when he's going to turn his game around, but it's getting close to do-or-die at this point for him with the meat of the schedule beginning in less than two weeks.  Turnovers were also an issue, as they turned the ball over 15 times on 72 possessions (21%, which I believe is our highest % for the season so far).  Although turnovers are always an issue regardless of who the opponent is, I'm hoping it was more due to the fact they were playing a cupcake squad and let sloppy play sneak into the game.  Despite this, we still managed to win the turnover battle by 2.

And now for a few high points.  The one that stands out the most is rebounding, as Marquette out-rebounded Centenary 47-25 (19-7 on the offensive glass).  This has been a struggling point for us over the last couple weeks, but I feel like a lot of this has to do with the fact that Centenary is the 333rd tallest team in D-1 basketball.

Which reminds me, while we're on the subject of team height, MU is the 146th tallest team in the country.  That may not seem very impressive (I agree, it isn't), but compared to last year when we were the 341st tallest team in the country that's a major improvement.

Anyways, there were a couple individual performances worth noting from this game too.  The one that stands out the most goes to Jamail Jones, who had a career day going 3-4 from 3-point land (4-6 overall) and finishing with 11 points for the day.  Hopefully he can build upon this as we'll take all the depth we can get.  Despite the 3-pointers, DJO put up 16 points (14 in the second half ) and shot 75% from 2-point range.  Vander Blue also had a good shooting night, scoring 16 points on 8-10 shooting.  Keep up the good work boys.

Marquette's next matchup is against Mississippi Valley State on Tuesday at 7:00 at the BC.  Anyone think Jerry Rice will be in the house to watch his alma mater?  Me neither, but it's wishful thinking.