Matt Velazquez

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

When Marquette head coach Steve Wojciechowski began preparing for Monday night's game against Howard, he knew the Golden Eagles were going to be in for a unique test. The Bison, which played Michigan on Friday, employed a style of matchup zone defense in their season-opener that Wolverines head coach John Beilein said he hadn't seen in 40 years.

"If he hasn't seen it then you know it's a little bit out of the box," Wojciechowski said.

Marquette, which defeated Howard, 81-49, at the BMO Harris Bradley Center on Monday, took a little while to get going against the zone. The Golden Eagles sputtered at the start of the game, struggling to get good looks. They also had eight first-half turnovers, with many coming in the half court against the zone.

"Today we went in the game and it was just a confusing game," graduate transfer Katin Reinhardt said. "They really played their zone — we were just trying to figure it out in the first half. Obviously, we turned the ball over a little too much in the first half."

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After starting slow, Marquette took the lead for good at the 13:11 mark of the first half on a three-pointer by freshman Markus Howard. The offense didn't immediately take off from there, though. The Bison leaned on their defense and kept the score close until the Golden Eagles ended the half on an 8-3 run to take a 34-23 lead into the break.

When the teams came back out, Marquette demonstrated its ability to adjust and pulled away.

"I think it took us a while to get our footing and I didn't think we were moving the ball or our bodies against it as well as we needed to," Wojciechowski said. "Fortunately in the second half I thought we did a better job of that. ...

"Most zone defenses have an air of predictability to them where you pretty much can tell your team what the rotations are going to be, what it's going to look like and their zone takes a lot of different shapes, sometimes in the course of a possession. It forces you to play basketball. It's not something you see very often, so that's why I thought it took us a little while to get our footing, but once we did we did pretty good."

While the ball didn't move as well as it could have in the first half, Marquette did rack up high assist numbers throughout the game. The Golden Eagles assisted on 10 of 13 field goals in the opening 20 minutes and finished with 22 assists on 29 made shots. They also cut their turnovers down after intermission, matching their 12 from the season-opener.

Tidbits: Marquette found a lot of success when it got off and running, scoring 22 fast-break points. Sophomore Haanif Cheatham showed a proclivity toward pushing the ball off defensive rebounds, turning his first three rebounds of the game into transition opportunities that the Golden Eagles cashed in on. ...

By going 9 for 21 from three-point range, Marquette improved to 22 of 52 (42.3%) from beyond the arc this season. Freshman Sam Hauser has been the most consistent threat, making 7 of 11 three-point tries (63.6%). Markus Howard got into the act on Monday, making 3 of 4 three-point attempts after not trying anything from deep in the opener. ...

All 11 of Marquette's available scholarship players took the court in the first half and each ultimately played at least 10 minutes with no one playing more than 27. ...

With its win over Vanderbilt, Marquette is now 84-16 in season openers. The win over Howard helped MU improve to 93-7 in home openers.