Marquette Takes Care Of South Florida On Road by Michael Hunt of JSOnline 2-6-13

Tampa, Fla. - If Marquette is a good basketball team - and there is plenty of evidence that it is two-thirds into the season - it did exactly as it was supposed to Wednesday night.

It wiped the floor with a bad team.

The No. 24 Golden Eagles beat up on South Florida, 70-47, and yes, the Bulls are some kind of bad.


But that wasn't Marquette's concern. The Golden Eagles (16-5, 7-2) came to the Sun Dome to validate their standing by showing genuine road resiliency, the kind that came after being flattened Sunday at Louisville. They did that and then some, immediately putting that bad loss in the rearview by jumping on the Big East's last-place team early and often.

Thirteen minutes into the game, the Golden Eagles were up by 20 after forcing turnover after turnover. And that was that.

"They're too good of a team to let them break out a lead," South Florida coach Stan Heath said. "You have to move the ball on Marquette. They clog up the lane with extra bodies. They guard you."

It was Marquette's largest margin of victory on the road since beating Seton Hall by 25 five years ago. More satisfying for the Golden Eagles, they almost doubled their margin of victory on South Florida (10-12, 1-9) from last week at the Bradley Center.

All that, and they also moved back into a first-place conference tie with Syracuse.

When Big East play began, Marquette coach Buzz Williams predicted the Golden Eagles would blow out no conference opponent. Maybe the Golden Eagles' pre-tournament surge - they have won nine of their last 11 games - is surprising even their coach.

"I thought our preparation and the way we handled the Louisville game was really good," Williams said. "We really responded."

Of note, sophomore guard Todd Mayo, who didn't get off the bench on Jan. 26 in the Bat Game victory against Providence, played 21 minutes and scored a season-high 13 points on 5-of-7 shooting.

"The bench is a great teacher," Williams said. "Junior (Cadougan) and Trent (Lockett) have been playing great together (a month) before selection Sunday."

Vander Blue, who scored a career-high 30 points last week against South Florida, had 13 this time in a total team effort. Blue, who has taken on a leadership role in his junior season, saw two good things emerging from the victory.

One was the dominating road performance, no matter the opponent.

"It's pretty tough coming here playing a team like that, especially getting spoiled with some nice weather," Blue said. "It's kind of hard to stay focused, but we a good job of sticking together. Everybody played pretty well and we got the 'W.' "

The other was Mayo's performance. The Golden Eagles are going to need another scorer come tournament time.

"Todd's a great scorer," Blue said. "It was no surprise what he did. We needed that from him. That's what he does, he scores the ball. A lot of teams focus on me and Trent and Davante (Gardner), so it's good we have another guy they can focus on like Todd. We need him to do that."

The Golden Eagles also got the chance to get freshmen Steve Taylor Jr. and Jamal Ferguson on the floor at the same time.

Gardner, who was kicked out of the last South Florida game with a flagrant-2 foul, had eight points and four rebounds after playing poorly at Louisville. It wasn't even as if the sparse crowd even knew Gardner was ejected last week for swinging an elbow.

In an unrelated incident, Jordan Omogbehin, South Florida's 7-foot-3, 334-pound center, was charged with a flagrant.