Who needs 3 big men? Otule hits 9 straight en route to 96-65 win

Joe Fulce and Davante Gardner returned Saturday to get MU back to full strength with all three of their big men in action.

For one of the few times, MU did not need all three as they watched Chris Otule go 9 for 9 from the floor to lead the route, the second best shooting performance in MU history behind Wesley Matthew’s 10-10 against Rutgers.

No team surprises
At the team level, there were no surprises Saturday. Longwood provided a very exciting opponent, but with no ability to stop MU from getting to the hoop.

With 10 minutes to play in the game MU was hitting 72% of their two-point attempts (28 of 39) and was grabbing 44% (8 of 18) of their misses. Put it together and when MU put up a 2-pointer they were getting either the basket or the offensive rebound 84% of the time.

Joe Fulce did have a couple of big slams in his first game back, but Davante Gardner was able to rest on the bench and watch the up and down game.

Buzz trumped all of Longwood’s speed by starting lightning fast Reggie Smith, who closed the game with a nice pass to Robert Frozena to get him on the board for the year.

Longwood came in averaging 75 trips down the court a game, and didn’t disappoint Saturday night forcing more than 40 trips in both halves for an unbelievable pace.
But even Longwood tried out a 2-3 zone on MU, as teams conclude MU is just too athletic and tough to guard man to man.

Marquette had five double digit scorers with Otule 19, DJO 14, Vander Blue 12, Jae Crowder 10 and Dwight Buycks 10.