Marquette defeats Wisconsin in Madison

The Marquette Golden Eagles led wire-to-wire en route to an 82-63 throttling of the Wisconsin Badgers in Madison on Saturday afternoon.

Andrew Rowsey led the way with 24 points, 18 of which came in the second half. If not for foul trouble, Rowsey would have hovered around 40 points. That’s how good he was. Markus Howard was also remarkable, especially when Rowsey would go to the bench with foul trouble. Howard ended the day with 23 points, continuing to show how hard it is for opposing teams to contain both Rowsey and Howard, the Big East’s two leading scorers this season. For those keeping track at home, Rowsey and Howard combined for 57 points. Wisconsin scored 63 points. If you add Sam Hauser’s 16 to that group, Marquette got 73 points from three players.

Brad Davison led Wisconsin with 20 points.

Saturday was the first time since 1981 that the Golden Eagles won by double-digits in Madison. Additionally, this marks the first time since 1981 & 1983 that Marquette won back-to-back games in Madison.

The Badgers quite clearly aren’t what they used to be, considering most of their good players and good coach have departed the program, but this is still a significant win for the Golden Eagles. Even looking past the rivalry aspect, Marquette really couldn’t afford a loss to a Badgers team that suddenly looks like it will be auto-bid or bust in the Big Ten, especially after the Golden Eagles fell to Georgia last weekend.

Marquette improves to 7-3 and, barring a big let down, will be 9-3 heading into Big East play. Loss to Georgia aside, that’s about as much as Golden Eagles fans could have hoped for coming into the year. They’ll have a nice long finals week layoff before returning to action on December 18.