Jae Crowder was staring his second straight sub-par performance in the face. After scoring two points and grabbing three rebounds in 24 foul-plagued minutes in a win over Wisconsin Saturday, he had come out flat again.
Then he simply took over.
The senior forward owned the final 14 minutes of Marquette’s 79-77 win over Washington at Madison Square Garden Tuesday night, capping his night off with a game-winning 3-pointer from the right corner with 6.3 seconds left.
Crowder finished the game with 18 points, six rebounds and one block.
“That’s my guy,” coach Buzz Williams said of Crowder. “I’ll roll with that cat no matter where he goes, and when his career is over, that’s my guy.”
The Huskies took their biggest lead of the night, 50-46, after sophomore guard Chris Wilcox hit a three as Crowder attempted to close out on the shooter.
At that point, Crowder was just 1-of-6 from the field with two points and two fouls. He had missed all three of his three-point attempts and had only three rebounds.
Senior guard Darius Johnson-Odom had been the only offensive player under control and the pace of the game suggested that if Marquette didn’t find another scorer, Washington would pull away.
But the trip down after Wilcox’s three, Crowder turned it on. He took advantage of a defensive switch and scored on a hook shot over junior guard Adbul Gaddy. After a brief trip to the bench, Crowder re-entered the game at the 12:24 mark and scored again on Marquette’s first possession.
Crowder would score on another layup and a breakaway dunk later in the half to keep Marquette even with the Huskies’ fast-paced offense. He also added crucial interior defense down the stretch, seeing time at center after redshirt junior center Chris Otule was lost to a knee injury within the first three minutes of the game.
Despite his complete makeover in the second half, Crowder said his mentality never changed.
“Same exact thing that I had been doing up until that point,” Crowder said about what he did in the second half versus the first. “Shooting the ball in the right situations. Not changing up a lot. At some point I have to catch a rhythm. I still had the same mentality.”
After a Johnson-Odom free throw with 31.2 seconds left gave Marquette a one-point advantage, sophomore guard Terrence Ross responded with a 12-foot bank shot with 15.6 seconds left.
Williams elected not to use any of his remaining three timeouts. Instead, sophomore guard Vander Blue brought the ball up the right side of the floor and found Crowder, who had come off a baseline screen from redshirt sophomore forward Jamil Wilson, wide open in the corner.
Williams said the decision not to call a timeout after Washington’s basket was because of his team’s toughness and preparation for those types of situations.
“I do think that our guys were just tough enough to hang in there and I thought that the execution without having to call a timeout was critical,” Williams said. “That’s something we do every day (in practice) so that we don’t have to play against a set defense.”
