by MILWAUKEE – The Marquette men’s basketball team cruised to a 115-47 victory in an exhibition matchup over Wisconsin Lutheran Saturday afternoon at the BMO Harris Bradley Center.
Saturday’s contest marked the debut of Steve Wojciechowski, who is in his first season as head coach of the Golden Eagles after spending 14 seasons as an assistant coach at Duke.
Senior forward Juan Anderson scored a game-high 27 points, connecting on 11-of-16 from the field. Sophomores Deonte Burton and Jajuan Johnson added 17 and 16 points, respectively. Anderson and Burton each provided multiple highlight-reel dunks to ignite the Marquette faithful.
Sandy Cohen III finished with 14 points, tallying three 3-pointers, while teammate Steve Taylor, Jr. contributed eight points and a game-high 11 boards. Matt Carlino dished out a game-high 12 assists to go with his eight points.
After leading 43-15 at the half, Marquette kept the foot on the gas scoring 72 second half points to eclipse the century mark. Marquette knocked down six threes in the second half, shooting 67 percent from behind the arc.
The Golden Eagles pressured Wisconsin Lutheran into 33 turnovers, scoring 47 points of those miscues. The Golden Eagles did the majority of their damage on the offensive end on the fast break, pouring in 48 points in transition.
All nine Marquette players saw action against the Warriors, including the graduate student Carlino, the freshman Cohen, III and redshirt freshman Duane Wilson who all donned the Marquette Blue and Gold for the first time.
Anderson led all scorers at the half with 17 points. He was active on both ends of the court collecting three rebounds, two steals and a blocks in the first 20 minutes of play. Burton added seven points for MU in the first, while Johnson connected on 3-of-5 shots to score six.
Marquette used their stingy defense to create offense in the first stanza, causing 21 turnovers and scoring 25 points off of those opportunities. Marquette held Wisconsin Lutheran to just four points in the first ten minutes of action, forcing 12 turnovers during the span.
The tallest player on each team’s roster stood at just 6-7. Taylor will be the tallest player for Marquette until redshirt sophomore Luke Fischer becomes eligible to compete after sitting out for one year due to NCAA transfer rules on Dec. 14.
MU’s tilt against Wisconsin Lutheran marked the team’s first exhibition matchup to open the season since the Golden Eagles kicked off their 2010 campaign with a 86-56 victory over St. John’s (Minn.) at the Bradley Center.
The Golden Eagles return to action Friday, Nov. 14 when they officially open their regular season at the BMO Harris Bradley Center against Tennessee-Martin at 8:30 p.m. Central time.
