Two days after losing a physically demanding and emotionally draining game to Charlotte, the Marquette women's basketball team was looking for a return to form against conference foe East Carolina.
Consider it mission accomplished, with an exclamation point.
The Golden Eagles played to their strengths, rode a strong defense and controlled the interior game to a convincing 76-51 victory over the Pirates Sunday at the Al McGuire Center.
"We came out with a lot of fire and fight," head coach Terri Mitchell said. "What I saw out there was an attacking mentality."
A large part of that attack was led by freshman forward Svetlana Kovalenko, who played a virtually flawless offensive game. In just 12 minutes on the court, she shot 6-of-6 from the field for a career-high 15 points.
Sophomore center Christina Quaye, who scored 11 points and pulled down eight rebounds, also gave ECU problems inside.
"Hats off to Svetlana and Christina," Mitchell said. "Even when you're getting pressured you still need to get the ball inside. Our post-players work too hard not to give them that opportunity."
"We worked on getting the ball inside in practice," Quaye said. "Today it was just carry-over from that."
After initially starting slow, the Golden Eagles started to pull away from the Pirates near the end of the first half. Kovalenko stepped outside and hit a 3-pointer with 7:13 left to make it 21-14, giving Marquette its biggest lead of the game, at that point.
The next time down the court, ECU's Samantha Pankey lost the ball to Quaye, and before the Pirates could regroup on defense, Kovalenko took it inside for a layup.
"She (Kovalenko) played great today," junior guard Carolyn Kieger said. "She stepped up big."
Marquette led by as many as 17 points and took a 13-point lead into halftime with the score 40-27.
ECU guard Viola Cooper kept her team in the game. She scored 10 of her 13 points in the first half.
Cooper nailed a 3-pointer with 1:21 to go in the first half to cut the lead to 10. However, senior guard Lesley Juedes answered with a three of her own to finish the half strong.
The story of the second half was Marquette's stifling defense, which limited ECU to an 18.8 field goal percentage.
"We're not shooting the ball well from the floor right now," ECU head coach Sharon Baldwin-Tener said. "Not to take anything away from their defense, but we haven't been shooting well all year."
No Pirate struggled as much as their leading scorer, Jennifer Jackson (16.3 ppg entering the game). The senior guard connected on just 2-of-14 shots and hit only 3-of-8 free throws.
Cooper, who had given the Golden Eagles the most trouble in the first half, was rendered a non-factor the rest of the way. She made just one shot in the second half.
"You have to give Marquette credit," Baldwin-Tener said. "They had more heart today."
This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Jan. 18 2005.