Red Devils roll at Marquette

OTTAWA — When a basketball team's shots are falling, everything tends to
look better. When the shots aren't falling, however ...

The Hall Red Devils made just about everything, while the host Marquette
Crusaders had a tough time putting the ball in the basket at all
Wednesday evening in a makeup Tri-County Conference meeting at Bader
Gym. The Red Devils finished the night shooting 50.0 percent, the Cru
shot 28.6 percent, and the end result was a 64-35 triumph for the
league-leading visitors from Spring Valley.

The Crusaders had little trouble with the Red Devils' full-court
pressure, but couldn't convert on the resulting easy shots. Hall,
meanwhile, had no trouble scoring behind strong efforts from leading
scorer Brett Fanning (14 points on 6-of-9 shooting) and 6-3 forward
Derek Lukosus (15 points on 7-of-10 shooting, 13 rebounds, four blocked
shots).

Lukosus was especially impressive for the Red Devils after a rough
outing in Hall's last contest against Midland.

"I took (Lukosus and fellow forward Brian Kruse) in the locker room
before the game and, like I tell my two daughters, I gave them 'The
Talk,' " Filippini said. "And I think they both took it to heart. Derek
had a great game. It seemed like Derek got every rebound in the gym ...
and Brian had a much better game for us than he did against Midland, too."

By the end of the opening quarter, Marquette trailed 15-11. By
halftime, the deficit had grown to 33-20. The Red Devils (15-7 overall,
6-0 TCC) then put the Crusaders (6-16, 2-4) away in the third quarter
with an 18-4 run and removed their starters up 50-26 with 6:29 remaining.

While his squad's press didn't create many turnovers, Hall coach Mike
Filippini did feel it accomplished its primary objective — speeding the
Crusaders' offense up just enough to cause a lot of those misses.

"That was the plan, to speed them up," Filippini said. "They kind of had
a different press break we weren't really prepared for, and they got
some easy runouts, but I thought we did a good job of making them play
up-tempo. I didn't think they wanted to play up-tempo like we did."