Boys basketball: Marquette goes up-tempo, races past Serena for wild 86-76 win

SERENA – The Serena Huskers started to find some success around the time of their appearance at the Marseilles Holiday Tournament by changing things up and playing an up-tempo, scrambling style of basketball.

They found out Tuesday night that the usually patterned, half-court Marquette Crusaders were just a little better than they are in that style of play, at least for this night.

The Crusaders found themselves trailing by scores of 14-5 and 20-8 in the first quarter, so they abandoned their half-court attack for a much faster one and raced themselves back into the game. They then took control with a 17-2 burst spanning the middle two quarters on their way to a wild 86-76 victory.

After Braxton Hart gave Serena a 35-33 lead with a lay-in off a loose ball at 2:25 of the second quarter, Marquette outscored the Huskers 27-10 with the fourth of five Griffin Walker 3-pointers making it 60-43 at the 4:11 mark of the third.

Tommy Durdan accounted for 27 points, including 12 in that eight-minute rally that decided the game. Also for the Cru (16-9), Walker finished with 15 points, Alex Graham 12 and Logan Nelson 10.

The Huskers saw Camden Figgins celebrate his 17th birthday with 25 points, 11 of those in the first quarter when the hosts seemed to be firing on all cylinders. However, MA’s switch and the resulting defensive pressure on the perimeter forced 12 turnovers in the second and third quarters alone and 24 for the game as Serena fell to 13-14 on the season.

“After the way things went at Putnam County last week, we decided that this is the way we have to play,” Cru coach Todd Hopkins said, referring to using the high-energy style it used to twice rally from big deficits against the Panthers, only to fall just short. “In that game, we played downhill, and I’ve been waiting for it, waiting for it. Tonight it happened.

“We took the reins off and let them go a little bit, and they did a good job responding. … It was pretty fun to watch in the second and third quarters. I haven’t actually enjoyed watching us play in the last couple weeks, to be honest.

“Our intensity has been there, but tonight we put three and a half quarters together. We had a four-minute lull at the end in the second, and if we can get rid of that we can be dangerous here at the end.”

It was all Figgins early, with his nine straight points breaking a 5-5 tie for the early Huskers lead. But it was late in the first quarter when Hopkins removed bigs Beau and Brady Ewers and went with essentially five guards. It got within 20-11 when Walker hit a pair of 3s, and Aiden Thompson added a deuce to slice that lead to one.

Serena quickly widened it back to 10 before the turnovers started piling up, as MA netted 10 of the next 12 points. A Beau Ewers free throw started a 17-2 streak in which Durdan had six points, with a spinning layup in the lane by Graham with 6:03 of the third taking the Marquette advantage to 50-37.

Despite eight points by Ben Shugrue and five of 12 points on the night from reserve Dylan Cartwright – all in the third quarter – plus five more by Shugrue in the fourth, the visitors maintained near a double-digit margin the rest of the way.

“I would have liked to have been a little closer there at the end, because we’ve been pretty good at finishing games out from five or six out with two minutes to go, but tonight it was a little too much,” Serena coach Dain Twait said. “When Todd went small, we matched them for a while, but then we struggled with it, absolutely.

“We played a really nice first quarter until the last two minutes, but we’re just so inconsistent at times now. They way we’re playing, you’re gonna be hot and cold at times, but we have to find a way to maintain an even keel.

“We can’t turn the ball over against teams like that, and we’ve done it consistently. That’s been our problem since we started doing this, running this and getting up and down.”