The Golden Eagles get a chance to keep Cara Consuegra’s first season as head coach going on a visit to Iowa to face the Bulldogs.
2025 WBIT
First Round
#4 Drake Bulldogs (22-11. 15-5 Missouri Valley) vs Marquette Golden Eagles (20-10, 12-6 Big East)
Date: Thursday, March 20, 2025
Time: 2pm Central
Location: Knapp Center, Des Moines, Iowa
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
All Time Series: Even at 2-2
Current Streak: Marquette won the last two meetings, which came as a a home/away set back in 2003 and 2004.
No matter what happens on Thursday afternoon in Des Moines, the 2024-25 season has been an unqualified success for Cara Consuegra’s first season as Marquette women’s basketball head coach. The Golden Eagles won 20 games for the fifth straight year and seventh time in the last eight campaigns. Marquette finished fourth in the Big East after being picked to finish 10th. MU finished the regular season with a 13-2 mark at home, tying the mark for best home record by a first year coach. They got to 20 wins in the second fewest number of games by a first year head coach, and Consuegra tied her old boss, Terri Mitchell, for the most wins in February by a first year head coach. When Marquette beat Georgetown on January 25th, that was the Golden Eagles’ fifth road win in league play, the most by any first year head coach in program history, not in Big East play, but in any conference.
Given the fact that Marquette effectively started the Consuegra era with zero players with experience playing with each other — Skylar Forbes & Lee Volker averaged less than 18 minutes a game the year before, and that’s it, really — everything really worked out nicely for the Golden Eagles.
It hasn’t been necessarily easy or pleasant. BartTorvik.com shows the Golden Eagles at #100 in the country in adjusted offensive efficiency. This is largely because the Golden Eagles aren’t a great shooting team and then on top of that, they turn the ball over a little too much. They’re not bad in these departments, just outside the top 130 in the country. They make up for it by getting stops, as Torvik measures them as a top 30 defense. Mostly speaking, Marquette’s just a pain in the butt to get quality shots against on the regular, making defensive plays just by being tenacious and staying in front of people, and then doing a pretty good job ending the possession with a rebound.
And so they go to Iowa for a chance to keep this good first Consuegra season going, but there’s an air of mystery for the Golden Eagles. The last time we saw them playing, Lee Volker was being carried off after suffering a leg injury in the Big East quarterfinals. There’s no injury report in the Marquette game notes, and the game notes cleverly list “Marquette last game starters” and not “projected starters.” Volker earned Second Team All-Big East honors this year after averaging 13.1 points and 4.8 rebounds per game, and she was one of MU’s bright spots shooting the ball, connecting on 43% of her long range attempts. I presume that she’s not available here, 12 days after whatever happened to her at Mohegan Sun Casino. But, if whatever it was ended up more “knee sprain” than “ACL tear,” 12 days is theoretically enough to get Volker back on the court.
Drake was the #4 seed in the Missouri Valley tournament this season after going 15-5 in conference play. That was actually good enough for a tie for third, but they ended up falling to regular season co-champion and eventual tournament champion Murray State in the conference semifinals. The Bulldogs will be an interesting test for Marquette, as they shoot the ball incredibly well but struggle to get stops on the defensive side. Drake drains 34.6 % of their three-point attempts, which ranks just barely outside the top 50 in the country, and their two-point shooting percentage of over 57% is #3 in the land.
Abbie Aalsma and Katie Dinnebier are going to fire off a bunch of three-pointers in this game, and it’s going to take a lot of work from Marquette to make them inefficient. That pairing is shooting 44% and 39.9% respectively from behind the arc, and Dinebier is the top scorer on the squad overall at 23.4 points per game. She’s coming off 45 points in the MVC semifinals, which was her seventh straight game with at least 22 and her sixth in the last seven with at least 30. It was also her third 40 point game of the season as well as a season high.
On defense, Drake is going to struggle to put Marquette in bad positions on shots, and if Marquette wants to, they’re probably going to be able to get open for threes. Drake also doesn’t force turnovers, ranking #343 in the country in rate according to Torvik. If anything, MU’s biggest problem will be that Drake is elite at ending possessions after just one shot, ranking #4 in defensive rebounding rate. The Bulldogs don’t play absurdly fast, but they are top 60 in tempo, so Marquette’s offensive rebounding attempts are going to have to be measured against how much the Bulldogs want to get out in transition off a miss.
The winner of this WBIT first round contest will advance to a second round game on March 23rd. They will get the winner of #1 James Madison vs Davidson, which is slated for 6pm Central time on Thursday.