No. 22 Creighton avenged its loss from earlier this season, flipping the script on the Marquette Golden Eagles, as the Bluejays ended January by coming back in the second half for a 76-71 victory.

The game almost perfectly mirrored the teams’ December matchup in Milwaukee, when Marquette came back to win 76-70 despite a 29-point performance from senior forward Emma Ronsiek, matched by Marquette’s Liza Karlen, who scored 29 of her own in Wednesday night’s rematch.

Creighton started the game hot, as Creighton almost immediately forced Marquette to call a timeout with a 9-2 run over the first three minutes of the game, kicked off by senior guards Lauren Jensen and Molly Mogensen, with Jensen kick-starting the Bluejay offense with a three-pointer on the first shot of the game and Mogensen pacing the team with six first-quarter points.

Out of the timeout, Marquette’s defense stepped up to keep the Golden Eagles in the game, speeding up the Bluejay offense and forcing five Creighton turnovers in seven possessions late in the first quarter, allowing Marquette to take a brief lead at the end of the quarter. Senior guard Jayme Horan hit a buzzer-beating putback to give Creighton a 17-16 lead at the end the quarter.

“We got sped up a little bit,” senior forward Morgan Maly said. “I personally did, and the ball was sticking on one side of the floor, and we really wanted to get the ball into the post. We’re just looking at it too long, trying to force plays when it’s not what we needed to do.”

Creighton managed to hold Marquette off early in the second quarter, led by sophomore guard Kennedy Townsend, who scored six points in the first three minutes of the quarter, and Maly, who scored eight in the quarter including back-to-back threes right before the media timeout. Marquette took over the rest of the quarter, though, as Karlen combined with sharpshooting sophomore guard Mackenzie Hare for 18 points in the quarter, allowing the Golden Eagles to build a 40-37 lead at halftime.

Ronsiek, who was dominant in the first matchup, was held scoreless in the first half. It was the first time she was scoreless at halftime since Creighton’s away game against UConn last February and her only scoreless half this season.

Ronsiek finally got on the scoreboard in the third quarter, scoring four, as the teams played to a near stalemate. Creighton began to build momentum late in the quarter, tying the game in the final minutes and bringing the home crowd at D.J. Sokol Arena to life before sophomore guard Jordan King beat the shot clock with an acrobatic fadeaway jumper to silence the crowd and give the Golden Eagles a 56-54 lead headed into the fourth.

Creighton kicked off the final period with a 7-0 run and never looked back, never allowing the game to come closer than three points. Creighton hit 10 out of 12 free throws in the final 2:13 of the game to seal the 76-71 victory. One of the misses came from Maly, who ended her streak of consecutive made free throws at 46, which went back to last season.

“Everybody who plays Creighton knows it’s the hardest team to play in the country at times, just because of the way they move and cut, they have shooters all around… and as soon as you make a mistake, they go downhill or they get an open shot,” Marquette head coach Megan Duffy said. “I thought there were some phenomenal defensive possessions by us, but there weren’t enough. You have to stay mentally into guarding them for 40 minutes, especially on their own floor.”

Maly led the team with 21 points on the night, while Mogensen controlled the court throughout the night, picking up a game-high six assists.

Preseason All-Big East player King was completely locked down by senior forward Mallory Brake. King was held to nine points, three assists and two rebounds, all of which fell short of her season averages.

“Now that [Brake’s] had 20-ish games to guard guards, her attentiveness, how to navigate a screen, how to navigate a dribble attack, a lot of that stuff’s different than when you need to guard posts,” Creighton head coach Jim Flanery said. “She’s learning on the fly… and it’s amazing that she’s been able to do defensively what she has.”

The win solidified Creighton’s second-place position with an 8-2 record in the Big East, while Marquette slipped into a tie for sixth with Seton Hall at 5-5. The Golden Eagles’ record may be deflated, though, by the fact that Marquette has already played each of the top two teams twice and played its road games against each of the top four, leaving Marquette with the easiest remaining schedule in the league.

The Bluejays will travel to Indianapolis for a Sunday afternoon matchup with Butler at 2 p.m. on Feb. 4 to kick off a stretch in which four of Creighton’s next five games will be on the road.