It took an overtime to settle things between the Butler Bulldogs and Marquette Golden Eagles last time the two teams faced off in late January, but on Wednesday, a huge second half gave the Bulldogs a clean sweep over Marquette with a 73-52 victory at home. Butler outscored the Golden Eagles 36-22 in the second period, and gave the team a big victory after losing by a substantial margin to Xavier over the weekend. Here's three takeaways from tonight's game:
1. Kellen Dunham is a BAD man
I'm not sure if Dunham got tired of hearing about his teammate Roosevelt Jones in the Big East Player of the Year race and decided to do something about it, but the guy has been on an absolute tear over the last three weeks. Aside from a quiet nine-point performance against Xavier on Saturday, Dunham has scored over 19 points in five of his last six games, and had 22 tonight against the Golden Eagles. He went 4-of-6 from three on the night, including two back-to-back treys early in the second half that swung things open for the Bulldogs. Dunham's been tremendous lately, and proved once again that he is clearly the team's first option offensively, even with Jones on the floor.
2. Luke Fischer dominates again
It's not totally surprising, considering the Bulldogs have been without their starting center Andrew Chrabascz for the last few games, but Fischer destroyed Butler in the paint tonight. He dropped 17 points in a loss to Villanova over the weekend, and had 17 again the Bulldogs with a brilliant 7-of-8 shooting performance. Despite only grabbing three rebounds (which probably had a lot to do with Butler's Kameron Woods and Tyler Wideman grabbing 15 boards combined), Fischer did get a nice inside-outside game going with Matt Carlino before the Golden Eagles kind of fell apart towards the end.
3. Marquette gets a pair of starters back
The Golden Eagles got starting guards Matt Carlino (concussion) and Juan Anderson (ankle) back into the action tonight, bringing both off the bench in the loss. Carlino had the stronger game of the two, dropping ten points and three rebounds while hitting one three in the process. Anderson, on the other hand, had a bit of a rough go, failing to register any stats anywhere outside the fouls column in his six minutes on the floor. Obviously, it's huge for Marquette to have both back in the arsenal (especially Carlino), and Anderson should be able to get back into form soon. Considering the fact that he's the team's leading rebounder, with 6.5 boards per game this season, they'll need him to.
