After three blowout victories over Wisconsin-Stout, Beloit and St. Francis, Marquette had its first test of the season on the road against Michigan and failed in a 67-50 loss Monday night. Tonight the Golden Eagles have arguably their second toughest test of the season when they face Creighton at home.

Sophomore center Georgie Jones said Creighton is a team much like Michigan based on its style of offense: the motion offense.

“Creighton uses four guards and one center,” Jones said. “One of our centers are going to have to go out and guard on the perimeter. We’re going to have to make sure we’re prepared for that.”

Creighton will enter the Al McGuire Center undefeated at 2-0 on the year. In its last game, it hit 15 of 30 3-point attempts and forced 27 turnovers in a 77-58 victory over Davidson.

Jones said if Marquette is to be successful against such a prolific shooting team, communication on defense will be important.

“One of the girls on their team probably made 17 threes over the last two games. They set a lot of screens to open up their shooters,” Jones said. “If we don’t communicate on defense then we’re going to have a hard time.”

The Michigan game was the first of the season in which the Golden Eagles were held within 10 points of their opponent at halftime — Marquette was up 26-20 at halftime.

Then the game went back and forth until the 6:52 mark in the second half, when Michigan went on a 9-0 run to open up an 11-point lead at 53-42 and didn’t let the lead slip.

Senior guard Lauren Thomas-Johnson said the team let outside aspects of the game — first road game of the season and first broadcast on television — affect its play.

She said the game was a learning experience on how to handle the pressure of a closely contested game.

Junior guard Angel Robinson said a lack of hustle was one of the key factors in the loss and something the team needs to fix if it wants to be successful this season.

The 50 point output was the lowest of a season in which the team scored 118 against UW-Stout, 102 against Beloit and 74 against St. Francis. The team shot 28.2 percent from the field and 20 percent from the 3-point line against Michigan.

Robinson said the team just missed its open looks.

“(Michigan) played us for penetration, because they knew we were a good penetrating team, so they just packed it in,” Robinson said. “They wanted us to prove we could hit our shots from the outside. Our shots just weren’t really there, and we didn’t execute like we wanted to.”

At the beginning of the year coach Terri Mitchell said this was a fast break team. The Golden Eagles had no fast break points against Michigan.

Jones said if the team wants to get back to its fast break ways against Creighton, it’ll have to start from the inside, be mentally aware of the game and not throw outlet passes away.