"Was I upset? Yeah, I was upset. But at that point, I had to teach them," Mitchell said.,”Headed into the locker room with her team tied to St. John's after yet another ugly first half, Marquette head coach Terri Mitchell said she saw the intermission as a learning opportunity.

"Was I upset? Yeah, I was upset. But at that point, I had to teach them," Mitchell said. "We taught them, and we adjusted."

Consider it a lesson learned: The Golden Eagles shot 58.1 percent after the break en route to scoring 44 second-half points to pull away from St. John's 69-58 at the Al McGuire Center Tuesday night.

Senior Christina Quaye led the way with 22 points, going 8-of-12 from the field and 5-6 from the free-throw line to go along with six rebounds.

"We came out pretty flat in the first half," Quaye said. "Terri gave us a few words (at halftime), and we came out with the energy and passion that we knew we should have started with."

Mitchell said Quaye, who has scored at least 20 in three straight games, has been putting together the best practices she's seen in four years working with the forward, and that the effort is showing up on the court when it counts.

"She hasn't cashed out, she isn't a senior who's saying 'I've been there, I've done this,' " Mitchell said. "She's playing like a senior that's driven and a senior who wants not just to have a special year going out, but to lead this team to places we've never been before."

Marquette finished the first half 9-of-30 from the field, going 4-of-13 from beyond the arc. Mitchell said the team's halftime adjustments included an emphasis on working the ball into the post.

"We only had seven post touches in the whole first half," she said. "That's not how you're going to win a ballgame."

Quaye responded with two layups in the first two minutes of the second half. By the time she hit her fifth with 3:34 to play, the sight was so familiar that the crowd barely reacted. In the second half, Marquette scored 26 points in the paint.

Sophomore Krystal Ellis had 12 points, and sophomore Kelly Lam had added eight to lead a bench that chipped in 21 and wore down an opponent that got only 14 minutes and no points, rebounds or assists from its reserves.

St. John's Kia Wright and Monique McLean paced the Red Storm with 17 and 16 points, respectively. Both played 40 minutes.

"They have depth, and we ran out of gas a little bit," said head coach Kim Barnes Arico. "We came out and we really played hard at the beginning of the game, but then they made some threes and they came right back."

St. John's raced out to an 8-0 lead in the game's first four minutes, capitalizing on turnovers by senior Danielle Kamm and sophomore Melissa Thrower.

Staying on the same page on defense looked like a problem for Marquette on a few early trips down the floor that ended in wide-open Red Storm baskets.

"We just were trapping too high," Mitchell said. "We adjusted our traps and actually just went down and played straight man the majority of the second half."

Marquette did not take its first lead until senior Efueko Osagie-Landry found Quaye for a layup with 1:28 to play in the first half put the Golden Eagles up 23-22.

Quaye hit another layup a few possessions later, but the margin was erased quickly when Wright knocked down a buzzer-beating heave from well beyond the arc to tie the game at 25.

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