No. 12 Marquette tests road skills at Xavier

No. 12 Marquette goes for a third straight road win Saturday afternoon when it visits Xavier.

Marquette (17-3, 6-1 Big East) is 14-0 on its new home floor after getting a 79-69 win over DePaul on Wednesday. The Golden Eagles are off to their best start in Big East play since also starting 6-1 in the 2012-13 season.

The one loss in league play was an ugly night at St. John's on Jan. 1, but Marquette rebounded with two close road wins.

On Jan. 9, the Golden Eagles squeezed out a 106-104 overtime win at Creighton, getting 53 points from Markus Howard. Six days later, Howard was limited to three minutes due to a back injury, but Sam Hauser poured in 31 points in a 74-71 win at Georgetown.

Including a split in the NIT Season Tip-Off in Brooklyn in November, Marquette is 3-3 in games played outside of Milwaukee. The Golden Eagles will play five of their next eight contests on the road.

They are hoping for another productive showing from Howard, who scored 13 of his 23 points in the final six minutes Wednesday against DePaul. Howard is leading the league in scoring at 24.3 points per game. In the past two games, he is shooting 8 of 25 from the floor and 29 of 31 from the foul line.

Hauser scored 19 points Wednesday.

"We do need to be more balanced offensively and I thought we were tonight," Marquette coach Steve Wojciechowski said after the game.

"I really thought it started with Markus' passing to start the game. He really, I thought, made a concerted effort in the beginning of the game to share the ball. When he does that, it becomes contagious."

In addition to Howard's elite scoring and Hauser's steady production, Marquette is starting to get production from sophomore center Theo John, who totaled 16 points, 10 rebounds and six blocked shots against DePaul.

"He has learned to play with great physicality defensively," Wojciechowski said. "We need to help him learn to use that physicality and his body and his size on the offensive end."

Xavier (11-9, 3-4) is last in the Big East in scoring at 73.3 points per game and has scored more than 75 points in just one conference game (Jan. 9 vs. Georgetown). One of the Musketeers' worst showings was a 70-52 loss at Marquette on Jan. 6, when they shot a season-low 31.5 percent (17 of 54).

Xavier has split four games since its visit to Marquette.

It followed up the loss at Marquette with close home wins over Georgetown and Butler but took a 10-point loss at Villanova on Jan. 18 and a two-point home loss to Providence on Wednesday.

In its 64-62 loss to the Friars, Xavier nearly overcame a 10-point deficit in the final 3:44. The comeback was stunted by three turnovers in the final 31 seconds on a night when the Musketeers committed 18 turnovers.

"It's just the careless turnovers we had," Xavier coach Travis Steele said. "It's an absolute joke. It's a joke. We've got to get better. That's unacceptable. That's got to change for us to be good."

Among the biggest culprits was Quentin Goodin, who committed six turnovers in 24 minutes. Goodin has been a reserve in the past two games after missing two games with a right knee injury.

Goodin was limited to 20 minutes in the first meeting against Marquette and might come off the bench again Saturday.

--Field Level Media