By Nancy Armour
The Associated Press

ROSEMONT, Ill. - Steve Novak's teammates at Marquette see him shoot in practice every day, so they knew just how dangerous he could be if he got on a roll. Now DePaul knows, too.

The freshman scored a career-high 17 points, including four straight 3-pointers to break the game open as No. 11 Marquette beat DePaul 73-60 on Wednesday night.

"Man, he was an unbelievable spark," said Dwyane Wade, who had a pretty nice game of his own with 17 points, eight assists, seven rebounds and three steals.

"We needed something from somewhere and Steve is a big-time shooter in practice. He finally shot it in the game. I wanted him to keep shooting, but he didn't want to."

The Golden Eagles (18-3, 9-1 Conference USA) shot 50 percent and had four players in double figures. Robert Jackson had a double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds, and Todd Townsend added 14 for Marquette, which won its 10th straight.

Marquette has won its last six against DePaul, and hasn't lost in Chicago since January 1999.

"A lot of us were excited to come down to Chicago," said Wade, a Chicago native. "We knew they were 11-1 at home, they hadn't really lost at home. They beat Cincinnati at home, which is a good road team, so we knew we had to come down here and fight.

"That's what we did and now we can look forward to our next game."

And that next one is a biggie. Marquette hosts No. 2 Louisville on Saturday, and the Cardinals are sure to be ornery after being stunned 59-58 at Saint Louis earlier Wednesday night. It was only their second loss of the season.

Marquette was clinging to a slim, one-point lead when the Louisville score was announced midway through the first half, so Marquette coach Tom Crean made sure his team heard it. All they had to do was beat DePaul, and they'd go into Saturday's game with a half-game lead over Louisville in C-USA's American Division.

"I just brought it up and said we've got to start guarding better and rebounding better," Crean said. "There was probably a little extra energy after we heard that score."

Marquette needed that energy. The Blue Demons shot just 33 percent and had 13 turnovers, but they kept themselves in the game by simply dominating the offensive glass. At one point, the Blue Demons (12-8, 4-5) had 15 offensive rebounds to Marquette's eight, and had a 14-6 advantage on second-chance points.

But DePaul couldn't keep up that frenetic pace, getting just eight offensive rebounds in the second half.

"We didn't come off as aggressive, looking to score off our offense," said Sam Hoskin, who led DePaul with his third double-double of the season, 16 points and 12 rebounds.

"We weren't looking to score, we were looking to make the extra pass. When you don't score, it puts extra pressure on your defense."

Novak's little outburst didn't help, either. He'd never made more than three 3-pointers before, but he was in one of those rare zones Wednesday night.

With Marquette leading 39-36, he made one from the left side. Then another. And another. Then one from the right side, all of them hitting nothing but the net as Marquette took a 51-45 lead with 9:48 to play.

Jackson converted a three-point play on Marquette's next possession to give the Golden Eagles a 54-45 lead - their largest of the game to that point - and the Blue Demons could never overcome it.

"Those things are going to happen. You're going to have a guy who comes in averaging 4-5 points a game who (gets hot)," DePaul coach Dave Leitao said. "Both teams should have guys like that. One of their guys stepped up and our guys did not."