Back on track
Maybe this not-being-ranked thing wasn't so bad. At least, that's how the men's basketball team (16-4, 3-2 Big East) may have felt after dispatching No. 24 Connecticut and No. 21 West Virginia last week as an unranked team for the first time this season. Marquette dropped out of the polls after it opened conference play with double-digit losses to Providence and Syracuse. Sophomore guard Dominic James broke out of a shooting slump Saturday by going 8-of-17 for a game-high 21 points against the Mountaineers.
After re-joining the AP Top 25 Monday, the No. 24 Golden Eagles decided they might want to keep the status, winning 74-65 at Louisville behind James' 18 points.
Ellis keeps 'losing skid' at one game
The women's basketball team (16-2, 4-1 Big East) responded to its first loss in almost two months with a 76-70 win over Villanova at the Al McGuire Center Saturday. Sophomore guard Krystal Ellis, the Big East's fourth leading scorer (19.1 ppg), scored 17 of her 21 points in the second half and helped the Golden Eagles hold off the Wildcats, who rallied from a 16-point second-half deficit and twice cut the margin to one. Marquette held a double-digit lead for most of the first half, which may have given the home fans a false sense of security because until the anxious final minutes they seemed more eager to cheer the prospect of catching a free T-shirt during a timeout than applauding an Ellis layup.
Marquette had won a program-record 14 consecutive games before falling Jan. 9 at Pittsburgh 91-87 in overtime.
Shaking off the holiday rust
The track team won men's and women's team titles, recorded 12 first-place finishes and notched four additional Big East Championship qualifying marks (bringing the team's total to 20) at the Carthage College Division I Invitational in Kenosha over the weekend.
Quote of the week: "The way (Marquette) played today, they would have beaten last year's team." — West Virginia coach John Beilein, referring to his 2005-'06 Sweet 16 squad that defeated Marquette 104-85 last season.