By Paul Imig
FOXSportsWisconsin.com
March 10, 2011
Buzz Williams isn't sure whether Marquette ever recovered from its loss at Louisville on Jan. 15. But after the Golden Eagles' second-round win over West Virginia in the Big East tournament, they'll have an opportunity to avenge that loss on a neutral floor at Madison Square Garden.
Junior Cadougan scored a season-high 15 points against the Mountaineers on Wednesday night in New York. This earned the Canadian-born sophomore guard plenty of praise after the game.
"We put this game on Junior," Darius Johnson-Odom said. "He carried us and controlled the game and did a great job doing it. He played as hard as anybody. I think he controlled the tempo of the game on both ends of the court. He helped me get back into the flow, keeping me into the game."
With the game tied at 55 and less than five minutes remaining, Cadougan found Johnson-Odom for a 3-point basket to give Marquette a lead they would not surrender.
Cadougan wasn't done there, though. He later scored on a difficult lay-up and iced the game with two free throws.
"I think Junior changed the game," Johnson-Odom added. "He found me on one of those shots and that changed our momentum on the defensive end."
It was the Golden Eagles' defense in the second half that Williams credited as the reason his team won the game.
Marquette allowed the higher-seeded West Virginia team to convert on only six field goals in the second half on 27 attempts (22.2 percent).
There was nearly a 10-minute gap between made field goals by the Mountaineers that lasted from the 11:07 mark of the second half until there was only 1:46 left on the clock.
West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins thought his team just didn't make shots.
"It's been a year-long problem," Huggins said. "We just don't make open shots. We made some shots in the first half and then the second half we didn't make shots."
Jimmy Butler scored only nine points after averaging 23 points over his last three games. Johnson-Odom's 11 points was the least he had scored in a game since exactly one month earlier.
But the Golden Eagles' bench scored 32 points and nearly outscored their starters. In addition to Cadougan's 15, freshman big man Davante Gardner added 10 points off the bench.
This sets the stage for a rematch with Rick Pitino and the Cardinals. Nearly two months ago, the Golden Eagles appeared to be on the verge of a major road win at Louisville as they led by 18 with less than six minutes to go. That's when Marquette allowed a 24-5 run and walked out with the loss.
After defeating West Virginia, Williams remembered back to that mid-January game against the Cardinals and called it a "meltdown."
"I'm not sure that we ever fully regained our complete composure," Marquette's head coach said. "I don't know that we have even yet today. But I think that stuff dissipates once the game starts."
