It was an all-around team effort for No. 10 Marquette men’s basketball Saturday.
Senior guard Kam Jones almost earned his second career triple-double, finishing with 20 points, 10 assists and six assists. First-year forwards Royce Parham and Caedin Hamilton combined for 18 points off the bench. The team even notched 10 kills along with another top-ten deflection performance.
Together, the Golden Eagles (8-0) took care of business, defeating the Western Carolina Catamounts (2-4) 94-62 Saturday afternoon at Fiserv Forum.
“We thought our guys had some moments today where we really executed the way we wanted to be…” Marquette head coach Shaka Smart said. “We’re getting our young guys a lot of minutes… But whoever we have out there in the Marquette uniform, the standard’s standard, and we want to keep building on that.”
Although it was not exactly a hot start for the Golden Eagles, they warmed up halfway through the first half, thanks to senior guard Kam Jones, who had earned 10 of Marquette’s 21 points at the 10:38 mark to give his team a nine-point lead.
His offensive performance provided the spark that the rest of the Golden Eagles needed as their primary playmaker.
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“(I’m) just grateful for him because he’s a natural scorer, and he can really score with ease in a lot of ways,” Smart said. “But he also has become someone that’s a very willing passer, and he enjoys passing. I told him this at the beginning of the year, there’s four things you are going to be evaluated on. One of those is going to be your pass, and he’s done a nice job…
“We just have to keep building… All he can do is make the right play, and then as a team, we want to capitalize on that.”
The Golden Eagles finished out the first half on a 12-2 run with contributions from four different players. In the second frame, their lead ballooned up to as many as 39 points. Every Golden Eagle who entered into the game — other than the walk-ons — made their way onto the score sheet.
This was all in part due to Marquette’s strong performance from its bench that scored a season-high 37 points.
“I think our bench squad has really stepped up majorly the last couple games,” junior forward Ben Gold, who finished with 12 points, said. “I think they’re really starting to come into it, coming to their own… The young guys, the freshmen, Caedin’s first year actually playing, they’re understanding what it takes to play at a high level, play at Marquette.
“It’s really good seeing those guys thrive and do really well on the court. We’re not surprised when we see them making their shots and playing really well because we go against them every single day, and they push us in practice.”
Off the bench, Hamilton and Parham were the standouts, but Smart also said that all the non-starters ‘had good moments.’
“It’s great to see Caedin Hamilton with nine points,” Smart said. “Demarius (Owens), back-to-back strong games. Royce Parham is someone that contributed a lot of different ways, but on the offensive end, he makes a lot of things go…
“But those guys are talented guys, and I thought our second-year guys also took a step. This was Zaide’s (Lowery) best game that he’s played since starting this season.”
However, in the last 90 seconds of the game, sophomore forward Zaide Lowery suffered a left leg injury and had to be helped off the court. Smart said the trainer was optimistic that the injury was ‘not as bad as it could be.’
But now, the Golden Eagles travel to Ames, Iowa for their next big road test — No. 5 Iowa State on Wednesday.
“It’s more a matter of, can we have the competitive maturity, the competitive stamina, the genuine connectivity amidst really, hard circumstances when we go on the road,” Smart said. “Iowa State’s got a terrific program. They’re one of the best teams in the country, very well coached, and I’ve been in that building many times.
“That is a hard place to play, you know, a raucous crowd, and we’re going to have to really put our hard hat on, be ready to hang in there for 40 minutes and play connected, tough, resilient basketball. It may not be pretty all the time, but that’s what’s required. So it’s not so much, you know, finding that out about the guys as much as it is, can we as a collective unit bring that out of each other.”
This article was written by Kaylynn Wright. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @KaylynnWrightMU.
