MARQUETTE — Great players step up when their teams need them to the most.

That player for the Marquette girls varsity basketball team on Tuesday night was Maddie Carter.

The Redettes senior threw up 21 points, including a go-ahead and-1 play late in the fourth, en route to a 55-48 home victory over Great Northern Conference foe Escanaba at the Barb Crill Gymnasium.

Marquette avenged a season-opening loss to the Eskymos, which occurred back on Dec. 3, and after starting the season 0-2, is now riding a seven-game win streak.

MSHS head coach Ben Smith called it a game of momentum shifts, with his team stalling out on an 8-0 Eskymos run to close out the second quarter that cut the Redettes’ lead to 24-23 at halftime. MSHS was unable to get back on the gas to begin the third, forcing it to play from behind for much of the second half.

“It was a pretty decent start, but then we closed the half where I think (Esky) scored eight in a row,” he said. “We can’t have those runs. We came out of the half and made a bucket or two, and then we were stuck at 27 (points) for way too long. It wasn’t like we were making them earn things, I think they had about six straight line drives to finish plays or get fouled, which isn’t good enough against good teams like that.

“We’ve got to figure it out, but the stuff that we do when we do it well is pretty good. We’ve just gotta make that happen longer and eliminate those hiccups. We’ve got to keep teams to one or two possessions rather than a 3-minute stretch.”

Despite being in a deficit for most of the final 16 minutes, Smith was pleased with the way his team battled back against an Esky squad which plays tight defense.

“I thought we battled really hard,” he said. “They have athletes and scrappy kids that no matter what defense they play, it will be hard to score on possessions when they’re set. I thought we got a little more movement in the fourth quarter, Aspen (Michelin) kind of ran the baseline a little bit, Maria (Millado) got loose on some rebounds and stuff and I think Maddie had 15 in the second half and 10 in the fourth, which is a game changer when you have size and you can use it.

“(Esky) is a tough matchup because they have kids who can make plays, but they don’t have regular centers or power forwards. They have some guards that can play bigger, they battled us really well in the glass at their place and I thought that was going to be the key to the game (tonight) by not giving up defensive rebounds and being able to get a few more offensive ones which I thought we did a great job of.”

Escanaba fell to 6-4 on the year after a three-game win streak of its own was snapped. Head coach Mike Beveridge agreed with his coaching counterpart calling it a game of momentum.

“I give Marquette a lot of credit,” he said. “They played strong the whole game, we didn’t play well at times, but then we played really well at times. It was a game of ups and downs and Marquette sustained it more in the fourth quarter than we did. I was disappointed in our defense and rebounding and stuff like that, but I’m not disappointed with the effort. My girls played hard.”

Beveridge added that his players didn’t have the size to contain Carter and will take the game as a learning experience going into another challenging conference tilt with Kingsford (3-5) on Thursday.

“We know the GNC is not easy and every game is a battle,” he said. “It’s always going to be a four or six point game and down to the wire. We just didn’t have the size (tonight) to match up with (Maddie) Carter. We learned a lot from it and we’ve got to get tougher on defense and tougher on the boards.”

Esky took a 13-10 lead after one quarter thanks in part to two triples from junior guard Anna Smith and one from sophomore guard Madison Monkevich to close out the first eight minutes.

After being down by as many as seven points in the third quarter, Marquette cut its deficit to one point on a pair of free throws from Millado to make it a 36-35 game in favor of the Eskymos going into the final eight minutes.

It was a slugfest for most of the fourth quarter with Esky freshman guard Mari Bink putting the Eskymos back into the lead 46-44 on a triple with 3:20 remaining. Carter then tied the game on a layup on the next MSHS possession.

Shortly after that with 2:28 remaining, Carter drained a putback shot and was fouled on the play by Bink, her fifth of the game. Carter was successful on the free throw attempt to make it a 49-46 Redettes advantage, a lead they would hold for good.

Marquette junior guard Kaleah Puskala committed a foul shortly after that sending Esky junior Nicole Kamin to the line. Kamin made the two free throws to cut the lead to one at 49-48 with 2:06 to play.

MSHS played keep-away for nearly a minute and a half before Monkevich committed the intentional foul to send Michelin to the charity stripe with 43 seconds to play. Michelin sank both shots, and made four more free throws down the stretch to ice the game.

Following Carter in scoring was Millado with 14 and Michelin with nine. Millado also collected 17 of Marquette’s 32 rebounds.

Marquette finished 19 of 44 from the field for 43 percent, while going 14 of 27 at the free throw line.

Kamin led all Esky scorers with 16 points while Monkevich finished with 14. Senior center Taylor Ray added seven. Kamin picked up eight of Esky’s 18 rebounds.

The Eskymos were 17 of 37 shooting for nearly 46 percent and 9 of 11 at the charity stripe.

Marquette hosts Calumet (5-2) while Escanaba visits Kingsford (3-5) on Thursday.

Escanaba 13 10 13 12 — 48

Marquette 10 14 11 20 — 55

Escanaba — Barron 2, Kamin 16, Monkevich 14, Smith 3, Ray 7, Hughes 2, Bink 4. FT: 9-11.

Marquette — Warchock 3, Ketzenberger 3, Millado 14, Michelin 9, Carter 21, Kelly 1, van den Ende 4. FT: 14-27.