Marquette continued its opening night dominance (79-15 all-time in openers) in a 97-58 victory over the Prairie View A&M Panthers.
After redshirt sophomore Chris Otule won the opening tip with ease, Marquette proceeded to turn the ball over in its first possession and give up a 3-point field goal in its first trip on the defensive end. It looked like it could be a long night.
That thought was short-lived.
Marquette went on a 9-0 run from there, including a 7-0 run by Otule and sophomore forward Erik Williams.
From there, Marquette’s biggest lead in the first half was as high as 32 and got as high 39.
Coach Buzz Williams started a unique lineup Friday night with Williams, Otule, freshmen guards Reggie Smith and Vander Blue, and senior forward Jimmy Butler.
“Buzz is real big on the players who play the hardest in practice are the guys who get to play in the game, and he rewards them by starting them,” Butler said. “This week in practice that group — including me — we beat the other team pretty badly. Before the game, when he called those five names, there were a lot of surprised faces.”
Senior guard Dwight Buycks, who was listed as questionable for the game, played 22 minutes with nine points and seven assists.
“Yesterday was his first day at practice,” Williams said. “Dwight is unlike a lot of guys, for whatever reason, maybe it’s his body type or how he’s built, but he took nine days off and came back to practice and played as if he had lost no cardiovascular. I do think that even if you cannot lose your wind, you lose a little bit of your timing.
“His two turnovers were not necessary. He does give us a little bit of calmness at that position at times, and we’re going to need that.”
Butler led the Golden Eagles in scoring with 18 points on 7-of-12 shooting. But freshman forward Davante Gardner gave Butler a run for his money with all of his minutes at the end of the game. Gardner had 17 points in nine minutes.
“That’s the Davante we saw in practice,” Butler said. “He’s a quiet guy, but when he has the ball, he’s loud without saying any words. He’s always in the right spots, and Junior (Cadougan) always seems to find him in practice, and Junior was finding him in the right spots tonight.”
From the three-point line, the Panthers shot 36 percent (9 of 25), but many of those opportunities were wide open close misses.
“Whenever we looked up on the scoreboard and saw how much we were up by, we were like, ‘Okay, we don’t have to close out as hard because they’re not going to come back,’ which it shouldn’t be like that,” Butler said. “We should play every possession as hard as we play the first 10 and 20. We got to break that habit.”
Like the exhibition game against Saint John’s (Minn.), the Golden Eagles used their size and height to dominate the interior with a plus-31 rebounding margin (51-19). No player had over 10 rebounds, but four had six or more rebounds.
“Take up space because they took a lot of threes, therefore they’re going to be a lot of long rebounds,” Butler said. “I think the biggest thing was that we were the bigger team, the taller team, and that’s probably not going to happen again — knowing the scheduling we play.”
Not only did the Golden Eagles dominate on the boards, but they also took control of the paint with 62 points in the region, compared to only 18 for the Panthers.
“We always have a big thing on paint touches. Coach Buzz always says, ‘three-pointers are fool’s gold,’” Blue said. “We always want to make one more pass to get the ball in the lane. Whenever you get into the lane, your field goal percentage is much better.”
Now the real challenge for the Golden Eagles will be coming back Sunday, 36 hours later, and playing another game. Marquette gets Bucknell, who lost at Villanova Friday night 68-52 but was predicted to finish second in the Patriot League this season.
“They’re literally completely opposite of the team we played tonight,” Williams said. “They don’t beat themselves. They play a lot of ball screen stuff. It’s a spinoff of what we did a lot early last year. They have a style of play, they don’t get rattled, they have more upper classmen than they do younger kids.”
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