After its first loss of the season, the Marquette women’s basketball team rebounded in a 66-59 victory over Creighton at home Thursday night.
Junior guard Angel Robinson said this was a good win especially after the team’s blowout 67-50 loss to Michigan Monday.
Coach Terri Mitchell said the biggest reason for the victory was the team’s ability to push the ball off defensive rebounds.
With the game still in reach for Creighton at 61-57 in the second half, senior guard Lauren Thomas-Johnson drove the lane and hit the game sealing lay-up with 24.6 seconds left.
Thomas-Johnson scored 20 points after she scored only four against Michigan. She said the biggest reason for the improved offensive performance was because she took better shots.
“My shot selection Monday was not as good as it was today,” Thomas-Johnson said. “(Tonight) I ran the floor and Angel got me the ball. If you run the floor ahead of Angel she’ll get you the ball.”
At halftime Marquette was up 33-25 in part because of eight consecutively made free throws to end the half starting at the 2:49 mark. Robinson ended the half with a steal at the top of the free throw line with five seconds left that she took all the way to rim and was fouled with .2 seconds left.
Against Marquette Creighton hit three of its 17 3-point attempts when it hit 15 of 30 from beyond the arc in its previous game Sunday against Davidson. Thomas-Johnson said the team’s emphasis on stopping them was the key to Creighton’s limited success.
“In our shoot arounds all the coaches told us that Creighton was a 3-point shooting team,” Thomas-Johnson said. “We got in their passing lanes and denied them the ball and that’s why they only made three out of 17.”
In the lane, sophomore forward Jessica Pachko and sophomore center Georgie Jones owned the glass. Both players put up double-digit rebounds: Pachko had 10 and Jones had 15.
Mitchell wasn’t surprised with either of their performances.
“Georgie has always been a fantastic rebounder and Jess too,” Mitchell said. “What I love about Jess is that even though, offensively, shots weren’t falling for her that that typically fall for her that she didn’t stop fighting but used her physical nature.”
