Something about DePaul had changed over the course of nine days.

No, it was not the return of freshman forward Wilson Chandler from suspension. His presence could do nothing to repair the Blue Demons' shattered confidence.

The Jan. 17 version of this team rallied from a 24-point deficit and, by game's end, nearly stole a victory away from Marquette.

"That's what Coach was emphasizing in the huddle," Dominic James said. "That this is the type of team that can come back."

This was the type of team that could come back, before the intra-squad turmoil that culminated in the benching of Sammy Mejia, Draelon Burns and Jabari Currie at the start of last Saturday's loss at lowly Providence. The problems snowballed, while the team's confidence waned.

By Wednesday night DePaul was an absolute mess.

Once the Golden Eagles gained a comfortable first-half lead from Dan Fitzgerald's long-range shooting, the Blue Demons capitulated. They never came within eight points in the second half.

The injury to Mejia, DePaul's best player, late in the first half did not help matters.

"We were just trying to get our feet on the road and make it a shorter game, but that kind of changed everything we had practiced," said DePaul head coach Jerry Wainwright. "We had to kind of make up some stuff because of" Mejia's injury.

Marquette led 32-22 when Mejia left the game and had held him to just two field-goal attempts in his 15 minutes of court action before the injury.

"Sammy, he's a great leader on our team," Burns said. "Even without him we needed someone to step up."

Burns led his team with 16 points, but his 0-for-6 three-point shooting prevented DePaul from making any serious second-half comeback.

As for Chandler, who scored eight points in 33 minutes off the bench after a two-game suspension for violating team policy, the rust was apparent.

"It's not going to be good when you have games taken away from your progress," Wainwright said.

DePaul, now 1-6 in the Big East after its fifth straight loss, is in desperate need of progress from its young core of players.

Marquette's transition into its new conference, on the other hand, could not have realistically gone any more smoothly through seven games.

The Golden Eagles closed out the game without breaking a sweat.

"Playing 40 minutes of defense was the absolute key," said Marquette head coach Tom Crean. "We thought last week that we played about 20 minutes of solid defense, and we lost our defensive intensity in the second half."

Although Marquette may have improved its defense in the second game, DePaul was clearly the different team.