The men's basketball team defied expectations Thursday at Cincinnati, showing that they could play just fine without star senior point guard Travis Diener. The Golden Eagles were rebounding, passing the ball, blocking out and, most importantly, finding juniors Steve Novak and Joe Chapman, who were hitting shots from anywhere on the court.
Unfortunately for Marquette, the team was about 34 minutes too late in putting on its "We can do this with Diener on the sidelines" display.
The Bearcats had dominated the entirety of the first half and all but six minutes of the second half of Thursday's game, running away with an 80-68 victory.
As expected, Marquette looked as if it were missing a major cog in its machine without Diener on the floor, allowing the game to slip away within the first five minutes. At the 15-minute mark of the first half, Cincinnati was up 13-6 and Marquette had committed two of its 14 turnovers.
Chapman, who finished with 13 points, with most of his minutes at Diener's old spot, had eight of those turnovers while dishing out just one assist.
Although his team clearly missed the 19.7 points and 5.9 assists Diener averaged, head coach Tom Crean would not blame the loss entirely on the Fond du Lac native's absence.
"Losing an all-American is a big loss," Crean said in a statement. "It's not an excuse. We have to adjust. We figured out we can play (without Diener)."
The learning experience Crean spoke of seemed to come with five minutes on the clock and the game squarely out of reach.
After scoring just 14 points in the first 15 minutes of the second half, Marquette went on a tear to finish out play. Sophomore guard Dameon Mason hit a jump shot with 5:45 to go and sparked the Golden Eagles.
From that point on, Novak hit five 3-point shots, Chapman hit two and Mason had a handful of jumpers punctuated by a fast break dunk off a steal with 1:14 on the clock. And all of a sudden Marquette had put up 28 points in the final six minutes.
The Golden Eagles had averaged about 1.5 points per minute in the second half before their scoring burst; after, they nearly quadrupled that output, averaging 4.6 points per minute over the closing six minutes of the game.
Cincinnati's Eric Hicks led his team with 17 points, and along with teammates Nick Williams (16 points) and Jason Maxiell (14 points, 10 rebounds) helped keep a 10-20 point cushion between the Bearcats and the Golden Eagles, negating the microburst and securing the win.
This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Mar. 1 2005.