Fresno State vs. Marquette 2016 final score: What we learned from the Golden Eagles’ 84-81 victory

The Marquette Golden Eagles took a 47-28 lead over the Fresno State Bulldogs into the half. Despite seeing that lead evaporate by a wide margin, the Golden Eagles were still able to celebrate their seventh win of the year by night’s end.

As time expired in the Bradley Center, MU found themselves on top of Fresno State 84-81 as the Golden Eagles can now divert their attention to their in-state rivals: the Wisconsin Badgers, who will come to town on Saturday afternoon.

Marquette has now ripped off five straight victories after their brief stint in the loss column back in mid-November. They will still have plenty of work to do if they want to match last year’s season-high nine-game win streak they rattled off around the same time of the year.

Five Marquette hoopers got into double figures in the win. Sam Hauser led the way with 19 points, 12 of which came via the 3-point shot as he maintained his sharpshooting ways. Luke Fischer, Jajuan Johnson, Markus Howard, and Andrew Rowsey joined him in double figures with 18, 14, 10 and 10 points respectively.

What we learned

Hauser remains a legitimate threat

Marquette’s sharpshooter was excellently executing on Tuesday night yet again. He shot 4-for-6 from downtown, which props up his average on the season to a mark of 52.7 percent on 44 total attempts this year. The Golden Eagles should continue to be pleased that they have him on their side, and they’re going to need him to maintain that consistency if they want to compete against their tougher peers this year. So far, he’s shown no signs of slowing down any time soon.

Katin Reinhardt’s struggles continued

Our friends at Anonymous Eagle have profiled Reinhardt’s struggles in depth, so you can trot on over there if you want a more full display. But needless to say he was rather inefficient again. He took the third-most shot attempts of any Golden Eagle (7) and was only able to convert one bucket - a 3-pointer. This also with 25 minutes logged on the night. He’ll have to continue to try and round into form here or, otherwise, adjustments will have to be made.

Marquette certainly got away with one

The Golden Eagles’ second half performance did not leave much room for optimism as they saw a 19 point lead over the Bulldogs almost vanish entirely. It’s not necessarily one factor in particular that led to this scare being put into the Golden Eagles, but they simply just have to play better. Sometimes it’s just as simple as that. This could’ve been viewed as a trap game going into it with Wisconsin looming this weekend, and MU can at least be thankful that they didn’t fall through any of the hidden doors.