Thirty-nine minutes and 58 seconds of hard-fought basketball rested on Travis Diener’s eight-foot bank shot with two seconds left in the second half of Saturday night’s game between the Marquette’s men’s team and St. Louis. When the ball dropped through, it gave Marquette a 61-59 victory that was more dramatic in its last two minutes than a bucketful of Shakespeare.
Led by guard Reggie Bryant, the Billikens engaged in a dogfight with the Golden Eagles, tying the game at 55 with 1:45 to go on two free throws by center Tom Frericks. Freshman Marquette guard Dameon Mason drove to the basket and drew a foul. He inched the Golden Eagles ahead by one point, making a free throw with 1:27 to go. St. Louis responded with a layup by forward Izik Ohanon, making it 57-56 St. Louis.
On their next trip down the floor, Mason once again went to the line, this time with 36 seconds on the clock, and drilled both free throws, pushing his team ahead, 58-57.
“I struggled at the beginning of the season with free throws,” Mason said. “They come in handy when you really need it. Tonight we really needed them. I stood up there, I had confidence, I wasn’t nervous, just knocked them down.”
After a five second call on St. Louis gave Marquette the ball back, sophomore forward Steve Novak was fouled and made one of his two shots from the line, giving Marquette the two-point 59-57 lead with 23 seconds in the game.
Bryant then raced down the floor and made a layup to tie that game with 11 seconds remaining.
Dierner calmly walked the ball across the half court line before he dribbled to the baseline, stopped, pump-faked, sending Saint Louis guard Josh Fisher sailing past him through the air, and nailed the jump shot. He then immediately turned around and knocked away the Billikens’ in-bounds pass, sealing the victory.
“They executed what we wanted to do flawlessly,” Marquette head coach Tom Crean said of his team’s effort on that last play. “Travis made a great read, had great composure making the shot.”
Marquette relied largely on Terry Sanders’ 10 first-half points to stay in the game early on. The senior forward isn’t known as a scorer, but his offensive performance kept the Golden Eagles from falling too far behind the Bryant-driven Billikens, who led Marquette at halftime, 30-26.
“Their style can get to you,” Crean said of the Billikens, “and we let that get to us a little bit in the first half instead of being on the attack.”
Riding a balanced offensive attack that included Mason, senior forward Scott Merritt and Sanders and three-pointers by Diener, Novak and sophomore guard Joe Chapman, Marquette seemed to pull away about 10 minutes into the second half. Chapmen’s three-pointer with 10:28 to go gave Marquette a 10-point lead, the team’s biggest of the night.
But Bryant and Ohanon brought the Billikens close, making it a game before Diener worked his two-second magic.
Diener led Marquette with 18 points and Mason had nine points and eight rebounds. Sanders grabbed seven rebounds and was second on the team in scoring with 12 points.
“He was extremely confident,” Crean said of Sanders. “We’ve been seeing that come. He’s feeling like he can score. He’s becoming a lockout defender for us. He’s getting better in every aspect right now, and I’m so proud of him.”