MOUNT OLIVE - Marquette Catholic head coach Steve Medford wanted to make a point to the officials.
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With the game sealed away long before the fourth quarter began, the level of play started to get physical.
“I just wanted to protect my kids. That’s all I’m looking for, and I’m not worried about the score or what have you, but I thought it was getting out of hand,” Medford said.
The Explorers remain undefeated at 8-0 as they clobbered the Mount Olive Wildcats 77-42 in Mount Olive on Tuesday night.
The Wildcats drop to 5-4.
Jake Hall led all scorers with 17 points. He was followed by fellow power forward Nick Hemann who scored 12 as did Isaiah Ervin, while Sammy Green added 11, including three triples.
“Jake’s a good player, and we got a lot of good players on this team. Each night it’s a different guy,” Medford said. “I’m proud of what Jake did tonight, and hopefully he can carry that over to Saturday night because we’re going to need him to be big.”
The Wildcats were paced by Roger Conlee’s 16 points and was followed by Nick DeVries with 11.
With the Mount Olive players not mentally quitting and getting more physical, the referees let the kids play, but maybe a bit too much. After a couple of foul calls that one would agree which should’ve been called, especially after a Marquette player was hit hard going in for a layup, Medford voiced his frustration.
“I thought we were getting some fouls because we had the lead we weren’t getting the calls. All these refs should be reffing the same way,” Medford said. “I blew off a little steam, and that was that. We’ve moved on. I’m proud of our kids, they played hard and did what we needed to do.”
A couple of moments later, right as Chris Hartrich got off a three-pointer, one of the referee's issued Medford a technical foul.
Fortunately for the Explorers, that was the end of that and all the while the second stringers got plenty of valuable playing time.
Marquette led 21-0 at one point and outscored Mount Olive 23-2 in the first quarter behind three baskets by Ervin and Hall. In the second quarter Hemann tallied six of his 12 points, Ki’Juan McGee sank two three-pointers. The Explorers led 49-10 at halftime.
The Wildcats outscored Marquette 32-28 in the second half.
The Explorers will host Althoff Catholic at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday night.
