Negaunee’s Gerald Johnson, left, stops to set up a jump shot as Marquette’s Jordan DeMay defends during the third quarter on Thursday in Marquette. (Journal photo by Ryan Stieg)

MARQUETTE — The first time the Marquette boys basketball team tangled with rival Negaunee this season, it was a close one with the Redmen prevailing by eight points.

Thursday’s rematch was a much different story as Marquette got hot early and didn’t let up on its way to a 78-33 victory.

Kam Karp and Lincoln Sager each had 17 points for the Redmen, while Will Luke finished with 14 for the Miners.

Redmen head coach Brad Nelson didn’t think going in that the game was going to be a dominant performance, but had a feeling his team would perform better this time.

“Not quite to this extent, but I knew we were going to perform better than the first time we played them just because of what we’ve learned since then,” he said. “The first time we played them, it almost felt like a loss just because of the way we played.

“So we addressed it over the last couple of weeks and we’re playing at a much higher level. It’s just one of those things that we wanted to come out and play hard and take them out of rhythm and I thought we did that.”

Negaunee head coach Dan Waterman felt that the Redmen improved a lot since the first time they faced off this year.

“Marquette’s a good team and to be honest, I thought they outworked us for the vast majority of the game,” he said. “Their guards are very fast, that gave us some issues.

“It seems like we were constantly in a ‘help’ situation and they’re kicking out and the 3s were wide-open 3s. And credit to their kids, they made them.

“I thought they cranked up their intensity significantly from the first time that we played them and that was a huge difference.”

Marquette held a 12-5 lead in the first quarter on a Karp layup, but two free throws by Luke cut the Redmen’s advantage to 14-10.

However, that’s when Marquette started to catch fire.

A triple from Sager and a jumper from Karp pushed the Redmen’s lead to nine and after the Miners’ Eli Luokkala dropped in a layup, Marquette closed out the quarter on a 7-0 run to take a 26-12 advantage into the second.

The Redmen stayed hot in the next quarter. A nice steal and layup by Karp got Marquette’s lead up to 20 at 35-15 and a trey from David Eberhard made it 40-15.

The Redmen also held Negaunee to just one field goal in the quarter, a jumper by Jackson Gladwell, and took a 42-20 advantage into the half.

Marquette kept pouring it on in the third quarter. A Karp jumper and a bucket from Eberhard made it 55-28 Redmen and Sager beat the buzzer with a 3-pointer to put the game away at 60-31 going into the fourth quarter.

With the postseason approaching, Nelson said that his team had made a lot of progress since the beginning of the year.

“The amount of practices that we’ve had at this point is the same as probably mid-January of a normal year,” he said. “So all of the things that you have to address at the beginning of the season you really don’t have time for, but we’ve been able to chip away at that. Slowly but surely, the parts are starting to come together.”

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal. net.