At first glance, the box score from the men's basketball game against Houston Wednesday might suggest a good, old-fashioned shoot-out. The Golden Eagles attempted 36 field goals and the Cougars heaved up 57 in response.

But a closer look at the more crucial stat — field goals made — shows that if the contest was a shoot-out, Houston used long range rifles that fired blanks over half the time.

While Marquette sank 55.6 percent of its shots, the Cougars could only drop 16 of their attempts through the hoop, good for a spit-take-inducing 28.1 percent of their field goals made.

The Golden Eagles used effective zone defense to keep Houston on the outside — the Cougars took just 24 of their shots from within the three-point arc, making only five.

"The story of the game for us was our defense, field goal percentage defense," Marquette head coach Tom Crean said. "The strength of their team is certainly their perimeter players … I thought our zone was very active. I thought our man-to-man was pretty active as well."

Although Houston couldn't hit a shot — "We couldn't hit the water if we fell out of a boat tonight," said Houston head coach Tom Penders — Marquette definitely could.

With dead-on accuracy from the field, the Golden Eagles broke out of the gates with an 13-0 run in the first five minutes and kept themselves a horse-length away for the majority of the game.

Junior forward Steve Novak stepped up with 23 points and eight rebounds, hitting 3-of-7 three-pointers and all 12 of his free throws.

"The last time I saw him shoot free throws like that, he was a sophomore at Brown Deer playing Pewaukee … We need to get him fouled," Crean said.

Brimming with confidence, Marquette outplayed Houston at almost every facet of the game. With solid performances from senior Todd Townsend (15 points and five rebounds), junior Joe Chapman (13 points, five assists and four rebounds) and sophomore Dameon Mason (10 points and seven rebounds), the team had one of its most positive offensive efforts of the year.

Chapman, filling in for injured point guard Travis Diener, had a few nice assists, including a slick dish to a streaking Marcus Jackson for a layup with 3:38 in the first half.

But perhaps most importantly, Marquette was able to keep Houston at bay when the Cougars made their inevitable push to get back in the game early in the second half.

After Houston's Andre Owens hit a three-pointer with 15:26 on the clock to bring his team within four, Chapman hit a layup to start Marquette on a 9-0 run, which culminated four minutes later when freshman Ryan Amoroso tipped in a Mason missed three-point attempt.

The intensity of Marquette's play seemed to match the last six minutes of its loss at Cincinnati Thursday, during which the Golden Eagles scored 28 points, including five three-pointers from Novak and two from Chapman.

Crean said the team watched film of those last few minutes in preparation for Wednesday's game.

"I think being able to go back and watch that film, we looked at it and definitely said, if we can play like that, we can bottle those five minutes up and just play desperate," Novak said.

"That's how we've got to play at this point. I think we did a pretty good job of putting that together in the 40 minutes we had tonight, and it paid off."

Game notes

Novak had a fast-break dunk with 4:41 in the second half and was fouled on his second dunk attempt just 20 seconds later, preventing the ball from going in … Four of Novak's free throws came on consecutive technical fouls on Penders, who had been arguing foul calls with the referees. Penders was ejected with just over a minute left on the clock.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Mar. 3 2005.