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No. 4 Marquette and No. 2 Purdue will bring completely different styles into the championship game of the Maui Invitational on Wednesday in Honolulu.
The Golden Eagles use a relentless defense to force opponents into turnovers, while the Boilermakers pound the ball inside to produce points.
Marquette (5-0) defeated No. 1 Kansas 73-59 in the second semifinal Tuesday, forcing 18 turnovers from the Jayhawks. Purdue survived a slugfest against No. 7 Tennessee, prevailing 71-67 in the first semifinal.
Marquette went on a 9-0 run early in the second half to open a 49-32 lead with 16:03 to go. The Jayhawks replied with a 10-2 run to cut the deficit to nine. However, Ben Gold hit back-to-back 3-pointers to extend the Golden Eagles’ cushion, and Kansas never got inside single digits down the stretch.
“Well, we kept our poise,” Marquette coach Shaka Smart said in a television interview immediately after the game. “We stayed connected. Kansas is a really good team. This tournament is filled with really good teams. We have two games down, but we got one big one still to go.
“(Purdue’s 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey is) the biggest, baddest big guy of all. So we’re going to have to get back to the hotel and quickly flush this game. I think the key is not to be satisfied with tonight, to go after tomorrow with everything we have, to play as we say, with reckless abandon.”
Oso Ighodaro had 21 points to lead a balanced scoring attack for Marquette. Six others scored between six and 12 points for the Golden Eagles.
“He’s a warrior,” Smart said of Ighodaro. “He’s so much about other people. Sometimes he forgets himself. But it’s learning to strike that balance. And he’s learning that he can stand up against the best bigs in the country.”
Purdue probably will need to get more from its bench against the Golden Eagles than it did against Tennessee. The Boilermakers got just three points — and 0-for-6 shooting from the floor — from their reserves on Tuesday.
Neither team could build much of a flow as they combined for 52 personal fouls, which led to 78 free throws in the game. The Boilermakers shot 29-for-48 (60.4 percent) from the charity stripe, while the Volunteers were 21-for-30 (70 percent).
Purdue’s Fletcher Loyer hit 10 of 11 free throws and wound up with 27 points. Edey had 17 attempts from the line, hitting nine of them on his way to 23 points. He also grabbed 10 rebounds.
The Boilermakers were ice cold from the field in the first half, connecting on just 6 of 30 field-goal attempts (20 percent). But Purdue heated up after intermission, hitting 13 of 24 (54 percent).
Purdue led by eight points midway through the second half before Tennessee pulled even at 61-61 with 4:17 remaining and again at 64-64 with 3:07 left. However, the Boilermakers scored six unanswered points to pull away late. Five misses out of six attempts from the line kept the Boilermakers from pulling away even more.
“It’s obviously a huge win for us,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “We’ve got a lot of respect for coach (Rick) Barnes and Tennessee and they’re a tough team — athleticism, quickness, experience, very good defensively — and I thought our guys, even though our execution wasn’t good at times and we had those 16 turnovers, we really did some good things.”
–Field Level Media
