Smaller Marquette girls pull away from St. Bede for Tri-County win

PERU – When the St. Bede and Marquette girls basketball teams took the floor Monday, there was an obvious difference between the squads.

Size.

The host Bruins started four players 5-foot-9 or taller with three posts on the floor, while the Crusaders had a more guard-heavy lineup.

The Crusaders took advantage as they shot well from the outside – making eight 3-pointers – and drove to the basket if St. Bede came out to defend the perimeter. Marquette pulled away for a 53-39 victory in the Tri-County Conference game.

“I was worried coming in because St. Bede has a very big team, they have very big post players, they rebound well and they’re aggressive,” Marquette coach Eric Price said. “I told the girls, they’re big when we’re guarding them and they have the mismatch. But when we have the ball on offense, it’s also a mismatch because we can put the ball on the floor and do some things. We have to remember that we have to fight on defense when we’re at a size disadvantage, but when we’re on offense we have to use that to our advantage.

“We caught them in some rotation issues and hit some shots. That was a benefit to us.”

St. Bede coach Tom Ptak said he was disappointed the Bruins couldn’t capitalize on their size advantage.

“We had a hard time matching up because of our size, so we went to zone for that reason,” Ptak said. “On offense I went with that lineup because I thought we should be able to pound it into the middle, but we weren’t getting good shots off.”

The Crusaders displayed their advantage right off the bat as Hunter Hopkins got the tipoff and threw a long pass under the basket to Chloe Larson for a bucket.

Larson hit Kelsey Cuchra for a give-and-go, then hit two jumpers before 3-pointers by Kaitlyn Davis and Keely Nelson helped Marquette push its lead to 16-5 with 1:57 left in the first quarter.

“We used it to our advantage,” Davis said. “Since we’re not as big, we can go faster. Rebounding was kind of hard because they were so much bigger than us.”

Marquette led 16-7 after the first quarter and extended its lead to as many as 15 in the second quarter before the Bruins made a late 6-0 run, capped by a buzzer-beating 3 by Parker McClain, to trim the deficit to 27-19 at halftime.

But in the third quarter, the Crusaders quickly pushed the lead back to double digits for good on a 3 by Davis.

“We had mental toughness coming back out,” Davis said about how Marquette responded to St. Bede’s halftime momentum.

Davis stayed hot in the third quarter as she knocked down three of her six 3s in the quarter to help Marquette build a 43-28 lead entering the fourth.

“I just let it go,” Davis said. “It felt good. I trusted myself and had confidence. The biggest thing is confidence.”

Davis finished with a game-high 20 points, while Hopkins finished with 10 points and Larson added eight as the Crusaders (5-1) won their conference opener.

“It means a lot to start off strong [in conference],” Davis said,

Ashlyn Ehm led the Bruins (1-5, 0-2), who shot 20.6% overall (14 of 68) and 15.8% from 3-point range (3 of 19, with 15 points, while Lili McClain added 10 points.

“I’m very disappointed,” Ptak said. “I thought we would play better. We struggled putting the ball in the hole. We just seem to struggle scoring. We have to work on that. We have to recognize that No. 20 [Davis] hit six 3s, and we have to get out on that and play better defense. We have a long way to go. I know the effort is there, but we have to be smarter and we have to be confident.”