Marquette University Athletics
Marquette Men's Basketball Team Plays Exhibition Finale
11/7/2000 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Nov. 7, 2000
Milwaukee -- The 2000-01 Marquette men's basketball team closes out the exhibition portion of the schedule on Thursday, Nov. 9, when it hosts the BC Flowtex Team from Slovenia. Game time is set for 7:00 p.m., at the Bradley Center.
Second-year Head Coach Tom Crean saw his squad claim its initial exhibition contest last Thursday (Nov. 2) when the Golden Eagles bested the California All-Stars by an 84-76 margin. MU received a balanced scoring attack, with four players registering double-digit point production, and strong play on the boards that saw it show a 48-35 edge on the glass.
Senior guard Brian Wardle (Clarendon Hills, Ill.) led the team's scoring attack with 19 points while also grabbing a game-high 12 rebounds. Freshman Scott Merritt (Wauwatosa, Wis.) came up with a fine effort off the bench, hitting six-of-11 from the floor en route to 17 points and also coming up with seven boards. The junior front line tandem of Oluoma Nnamaka (Uppsala, Sweden) and Jon Harris (Edwardsville, Ill.) combined for 22 points and 13 rebounds with the 6-foot-7 Nnamaka totaling 12 points and four rebounds and Harris notching 10 points and nine caroms.
BC Flowtex has dropped the first two of its six-game tour against U.S. college teams. In its opening contest, it dropped a 92-63 decision to South Carolina (Nov. 4) before coming out on the short end of a 106-60 verdict at Tennessee (Nov. 6), the No. 8-ranked team in the nation according to the USA Today/ESPN Top 25 Preseason Poll. Forward Zeljko Zagorac has scored in double figures in the team's first two games and is averaging 12.5 points and 4.5 rebounds. Guard Matic Vidic has produced the team's highest individual scoring effort with an 18-point effort against Tennessee.
"As with the case of most foreign teams, we'll see an experienced group of players who are older and more mature," said MU Head Coach Tom Crean. "It will enable our younger players to gain more experience while allowing for the rest of the team to continue to develop in a game situation."
Following the team's final exhibition game, the Golden Eagles open the 2000-01 regular season on Tuesday, Nov. 14, when it hosts South Alabama in an opening-round game of the Preseason NIT (7:00 p.m.). USA returns four starters from last year's team that posted an overall record of 20-10 that included a 13-3 mark in the Sun Belt Conference, good for first place. One of the Jaguars' standouts is Milwaukee native Ravonte Dantzler who averaged 12.3 points and 3.3 rebounds per game last season, starting 29 of the team's 30 contests.
