With first place on the line last night at the Savvis Center, two Jesuit schools needed divine intervention. One got it.
Saint Louis University’s prayers weren’t answered as Marquette defeated the Bills 73-64.
“We lost to a very good basketball team tonight,” said SLU coach Lorenzo Romar. “But I don’t think we played the way we should have defensively.”
Marquette won for just the second time in five tries against the Bills by shooting 50 percent from the field and 52 percent from behind the arc. SLU couldn’t stop the Golden Eagles’ Brian Wardle, who rebounded from a slow start to score 17 out of his 20 points in the second half.
“We knew coming in that he was a good player, but we didn’t step up and guard him,” said Maurice Jeffers, who scored a game high 24 points and grabbed six rebounds.
Both teams started out slow, going scoreless in the first three minutes until Marquette’s Oluoma Nnmaka hit a runner in the lane. SLU opened one for six from the field before Jeffers hit a 15-footer off the break six minutes into the game.
MU was beginning to set the pace of the game by playing hard-nosed defense and setting the tempo. Tom Crean’s squad wouldn’t let SLU’s big men have control of the post area. Despite a stellar effort against Cincinnati in which the Bills had their way down on the blocks, SLU didn’t find success against a boxed-in Marquette defense.
“They played us differently than Cincinnati,” said Chris Heinrich. “We had a lack of patience reading the defense.”
SLU got a burst of energy after Drew Diener entered the game midway through the first half. With his first touch, he nailed a three pointer on the right side, got fouled, and finished the free throw for a four point play that tied the game at 14-14. Both teams relied on their defense the rest of the half. Marque Perry’s two free throws and Jeffers’ jumper from the key with seven seconds left gave SLU a 28-24 lead going into the locker room. Prior to this game, SLU had been 10-2 this season when leading at halftime.
The second half was the antithesis of the first: each team relied on offense. SLU shot 50 percent from the field and drilled 10 of 12 free throws. That wasn’t enough, however, as Marquette exploded to shoot 65 percent from the field and made 18 out of 22 at the line.
When Justin Tatum converted on a post-up move one minute in, SLU had its biggest lead of the game, 31-24. MU scored eight consecutive points in the next three minutes, capitalizing on strong defense and careless Billiken turnovers. SLU would take the lead, 33-32, when Heinrich converted off a nice power move in the lane at the 16:17 mark. It would be the Bills’ last lead of the game.
SLU pulled within two when Diener hit a three from the top of the key with eight minutes left. They would get no closer, however, as MU increased the lead to seven after Brian Barone’s two free throws. After Heinrich fouled out with 3:10 remaining, the Bills were down five.
The Billiken defense broke down as Wardle, Nnmaka and Cordell Henry scored 49 out of Marquette’s 73 points. It was Marquette’s largest offensive output of the season, while the Bills also gave up 73 points to Dayton and Missouri. For SLU, Perry had 10 points and five assists, and Diener had 10 points in 13 minutes.
Up next for SLU is DePaul (9-8, 1-4) on Wednesday, Jan. 31 at 7 p.m. at the Savvis Center. The Bills lost to the Blue Demons 68-43 in Chicago on Dec. 19, and the hope to rebound from such a devastating defeat.
This past Saturday, the Billikens were impressive as they came from four points down in the last two minutes to force overtime against the Cincinnati Bearcats. The Billikens ran away with the game in the extra period, outscoring Bobby Huggins’ Bearcats 11-2, winning the game 71-62.
With the Cincy loss and the Marquette victory, the Golden Eagles have sole possession of the top spot in C-USA. If the Billikens could have won last night, they would have taken possession of first place.
