Marquette women’s basketball got back in the win column in Big East play as it took down Butler 67-46 Sunday afternoon at the Al McGuire Center.
“Our team came out with a lot of great effort,” junior guard Rose Nkumu said.
With the win, the Golden Eagles improve to 6-0 at home on the season.
“It’s really great to be back on the court after a week off for finals, our team has been locked in to their studies so it was good to be here playing a game,” Duffy said. “Butler is much improved from last year with their new coaching staff and I thought we had to be really on our toes today to be good defensively.”
Marquette fell behind early on 9-6 after after letting Butler score seven unanswered points. Nkumu then took a charge that stopped the Bulldogs run and sparked a 10-2 run for the Golden Eagles to end the quarter with an 18-11 lead.
Marquette fell behind 6-9 early after letting Butler score seven unanswered points. Nkumu took a charge that stopped the run and Marquette came back to end the quarter with an 18-11 lead.
“We expected when you don’t play for seven, eight days, it’s going to take a little bit time to get going,” Duffy said. “I thought both teams had a few turnovers. I thought we missed a couple of easy shots.”
The Golden Eagles started off the second quarter strong behind back-to-back shots from senior guard Jordan King. Marquette built up an 11 point lead over Butler before heading into halftime up by a score of 34-24.
King dished out her 400th career assist at the 8:24 mark of the quarter, becoming the 10th player in program history to hit that milestone. Additionally, King is the eighth player to reach 1,000 points and 400 assists while donning the blue and gold.
Marquette kicked off the second half with a 12-0 run, expanding its lead to 22 points. Butler didn’t score for the first 5:33 of the quarter.
“We talk about when our defense and our rebounding lead us,” Duffy said. “Rose Nkumu was a great spark in that third quarter getting out in transition and get some easy baskets.”
Nkumu finished with a game-high 15 points on 7-for-8 shooting from the field while recording three steals.
“Her poise was great. She got out the passing lanes and did a great job of getting in the paint,” Duffy said. “Funny enough, I thought that was kind of the end of her points from the day, but she started off (the second half) with a couple of jumpers, which was nice too. She works really hard on her on her game and it’s just nice to see her have a great afternoon today.”
The Golden Eagles built up their lead to 30 points in the fourth quarter behind a 10-0 run while holding the Bulldogs scoreless for nearly five minutes before Butler scored nine unanswered points to end the game.
Marquette forced 20 Butler turnovers and recorded 12 steals. Senior forward Marotta added three steals of her own to match Nkumu.
“We knew that they wanted to get into their offense, and they were going to be running a lot of movement,” Nkumu said. “We wanted to be able to blow that up. We wanted to make sure that we stayed disciplined in our defense and when we needed to switch, communicating with each other.”
Junior forward Liza Karlen posted her 12th career double-double with 10 points and 11 rebounds. Eight of Karlen’s 10 rebounds came in the first half.
Along with Nkumu and Karlen, two additional Golden Eagles finished in double digits as Marotta and King finished with 12 and 10 respectively.
Marquette led rebounding with a margin of 39-25 and assisting with a margin of 16-9.
Marquette (9-2, 2-1 Big East) will stay at home for its next game Wednesday against Pac-12 opponent Colorado (9-3) at 12 p.m. CST.
This article was written by John Gunville. He can be reached at j[email protected] or on Twitter @GunvilleJohn.
