Vander Blue Does It All For Marquette

Vander Blue was on fire today for the Marquette Golden Eagles against the Pittsburgh Panthers in a Big East showdown. Both these teams are ranked in the top 25 with Marquette being ranked lower than the Panthers. This game was all about Blue who was sensational scoring the ball.

Blue was 7 of 8 from the field and 3 for 4 from the free throw line to go with six rebounds for the Golden Eagles. He had a much better performance than the one he had against Georgetown. He made just three shots and scored seven pints in the loss on the road. Blue said in an interview after the game, “”I had sort of a weird feeling about how I played at Georgetown,”  “I felt like we could’ve got that one there. That was a big one. … I just wanted to make sure I was mentally and physically there right out of the gates to give us the boost and energy that we needed to win. I was just thinking, take what was given to me, don’t force anything and just play with unbelievable energy.”

Blue brought that unbelievable energy to this game and helped bring Marquette into a first place tie in the Big east. This team doesn’t think about what they need to do, they just do it. They are playing terrific right now and even coach Buzz Williams believes this about is team: “I think they’re one of the top two or three teams in our league.”

The Golden Eagles are flying high right now. They scored 11 of the final 13 points of the half for a 42-29 lead at the break. They out rebounded the Panthers and scrapped for every 50-50 ball. They out-hustled Pitt on both sides of the ball and played with a toughness that will lead them far in March.

Lamar Patterson helped keep the Panthers in this game by rattling off 19 points. “There were three things we wanted to do,” Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon said. “Hold them under 40 percent defensively; we didn’t come close to that. We wanted to keep them off the free-throw line; we certainly didn’t come close to that. Then obviously the rebounding, we got out-rebounded, so simply put, the 10-point loss is really pretty easy to see.”

Thanks to Blue and Davante Garder, the Golden Eagles are ready to take the Big East crown.

John D. Hayden  is a Writer and Contributor for www.RantSports.com, covering the NCAA and NBA.  Follow John on twitter @jdhayden09, or add his Google +  to your circles for all of his latest articles, thoughts, and rants.