Creighton squeaks past Marquette, 71-68

After eating a shocking loss to Georgetown earlier this week, Creighton was tasked with facing Marquette. The Bluejays traveled up north to face the Golden Eagles in Wisconsin, and left the state with a 71-68 win.

The win didn’t come easy for Creighton, as they found themselves trailing 31-25 late in the first half. However, the Bluejays would then go on a tear, finishing the game on a 46-37 run. They held the home team to just 11 points in the first 10 minutes of the second half. And while hte Golden Eagles made a significant rally, that pursuit wound up being fruitless and the effort became futile.

Creighton was led by Christian Bishop in the points department. The junior guard scored 14 points on a 6-for-7 mark from the floor, and grabbed eight boards, two assists and committed only one turnover in 25 minutes. Damien Jefferson stood out with 13 points, eight rebounds, six assists, two blocks and a steal. He committed three turnovers, but that was a mere blemish on an otherwise all-around awesome game .Marcus Zegarowski and Ryan Kalkbrenner joined them in double figures with 13 and 11 respectively.

In the losing effort, Marquette got 16 points out of D.J. Carton, 14 out of Jamal Cain and 10 from Theo John. No other Golden Eagle scored more than eight points on the afternoon though. Dawson Garcia scored those eight points and had six boards, but only had six shots all game.

At 9-10 and 5-8 in Big East play, Marquette is in a rather bad spot. Things don’t seem to be getting any better for them, as they’ve lost four of five, five of their last eight and eight of their last 12 dating back to December 14, when they were 5-2 and 1-0 in Big East play. This, ironically enough, came after a win over, you guessed it, Creighton.

For the Jays meanwhile, they’re on the up and up still. Even with that shocking loss to the Hoyas, they are 14-5 and 10-4 in conference. They’ve won four of five and are playing pretty good ball. They will need to finish the season strong, and their schedule does feature two matchups with Villanova and one more with Xavier, two of the top three teams in the standings right now. Buckle up Jays fans, this is about to get interesting.