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Matthews' perfection highlights Marquette's win

On Sunday, Jerel McNeal was nearly perfect from the floor in a victory over Cincinnati.

Four days later, Wesley Matthews did him one better.

The senior guard set a school record by making all 10 of his shots and finished with a game-high 23 points to lead the visiting Marquette Golden Eagles past the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, 81-76, at the Louis Brown Athletic Center on Wednesday night.

Marquette wound up needing every one of those shots as it saw a 21-point lead with just over 12 minutes left whittled down to just two with 37.0 seconds remaining before four free throws apiece by Lazar Hayward and McNeal over the final 34.2 finally put the game away for the 18tth-ranked Golden Eagles (14-2, 3-0 Big East).

“You take it how you get it,” Matthews said. “Should it have been a game like this? I don’t know. I don’t think so. We blew a 21-point lead. But that happens. This is the Big East, on the road, and they played tough. They’re going to beat some teams here. We’ll take the win, no matter what.”

Matthews’ performance eclipsed the previous mark for accuracy (on a minimum of 10 shots), 90.9 percent, which was accomplished by three players who posted 10-for-11 performances. The last to do so was Trevor Powell against Chicago State on Dec. 20, 1989.

“I was 10 for 10? I didn’t know that,” said Matthews, who missed out on a truly perfect night by going 3 for 6 from the free-throw line in a 37-minute night. “Sweet.”

McNeal finished with 16 points, Dominic James 15 and Hayward 10 for MU, which shot 52.5 percent and won despite being out-rebounded, 39-28.

“Jerel was great last game, as was Dominic, and Wes was good as well,” said coach Buzz Williams. “We’re fortunate that Wes played the way that he did (tonight). I thought all of those guys did a good job—three turnovers between them and they all played a minimum of 35 minutes.”

Rutgers (9-7, 0-3), which took then-No. 3 Pittsburgh down to the wire at home in its previous game, got 22 points from freshman guard Mike Rosario, with 16 of those coming in the second half, and 19 from Corey Chandler.

The Golden Eagles appeared to have put the game away right out of the locker room in the second half, using a 14-4 run to extend a nine-point halftime lead to 51-32.

The spurt was a microcosm of the entire game for MU: a little bit from everyone, as Matthews, Hayward, James and McNeal each had a basket. It was McNeal’s three from the left wing off a pretty pass from James that capped it and forced Rutgers coach Fred Hill to burn a timeout to try and regroup.

The lead was 57-36 with 12:19 left when Rutgers made a 10-0 charge, set up by the first sloppy stretch of play by MU. A layup by Chandler pulled the Scarlet Knights to within 57-46, prompting Williams to respond with a timeout of his own.

Matthews stopped the bleeding immediately out of that with a pretty floater in the lane, and after a Rutgers miss Maurice Acker set up McNeal for a layup that made it 61-46 with 8:06 left.

But the Scarlet Knights, who lost last week to the top three teams in the Associated Press’ media poll in a six-day span, began showing some of the fight that Williams went in expecting from them. Before long, Rutgers had made it a two-possession game at 66-61 with 4:36 left, getting the once-dead crowd back into the game.

Rutgers finally got to within a basket at 72-69 on a putback dunk by J.R. Inman with 48.2 seconds remaining, and after McNeal split a pair of free throws on the other end, got to within 73-71 on a falling Rosario jumper.

But from there, Hayward’s and McNeal’s rock-solid efforts from the line gave the Golden Eagles just enough breathing room.

“They made a run, we had a hard time controlling it, a hard time slowing them down, and then it was just a fight the rest of the way,” Williams said.

Added Matthews: “I think we relaxed a little bit. We weren’t us for 40 minutes, and they’ve got talent. I think we played hard.”