The Golden Eagles and the Wildcats meet up in the quarterfinals for the second straight year.
2025 Big East Women’s Basketball Tournament
Quarterfinals
#4 Marquette Golden Eagles (20-9, 12-6 Big East) vs #5 Villanova Wildcats (17-13, 11-7 Big East)
Date: Saturday, March 8, 2025
Time: Approximately 1:30pm Central, following conclusion of UConn’s quarterfinal at 11am
Location: Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, Connecticut
Television: FS2
Streaming: FoxSports.com/live or the Fox Sports app
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle, at least after I get home from the MBB game
Season Series: Split 1-1, with each team winning at home
All Time Series: Marquette leads, 19-17
Current Streak: Villanova won the second game of the season at Finneran Pavilion to snap a two game Marquette advantage.
One year ago, these two teams met in this exact same spot in the bracket, just with their seeds flipped around, Villanova as the #4, Marquette as the #5. At the time, it felt like a situation where the winner was still alive for the NCAA tournament and the loser was going to come up short. That was particularly notable for the Golden Eagles at the time, as they had lost both ends of the season series with the Wildcats. MU ended up prevailing in a particularly ugly 50-48 game where both teams had multiple chances to score in the final 75 seconds and just refused to do it. End result: Marquette was a #10 seed in the NCAA tournament, and Villanova was a #1 seed in the inaugural WBIT.
This year, there’s less drama on the table for these two teams. Neither one is remotely close to an NCAA tournament bid with Marquette coming in with a ranking of #57 in the NET and Nova a long ways behind them at #72 as of Thursday morning when I’m writing this. Someone is going to win this game and advance to Sunday where they are probably going to get shelled by #1 Connecticut. Both teams might find their way into the WBIT by the end of Selection Sunday, so it’s probably best to walk away from this game with a win for that reason, but it’s mostly just for bragging rights and getting to say “made it to the semifinals in 2025.”
The season series between Marquette and Villanova was a bit of a weird one. The Golden Eagles won the first meeting in Milwaukee between the two squads, but both sides were notably shorthanded. MU was without leading scorer and top shot blocker Skylar Forbes, while Villanova didn’t have top scorer and assist leader Jasmine Bascoe. End Result: Marquette 64, Villanova 59, behind 20 points and 12 rebounds from Halle Vice as the Golden Eagles rallied back from down 13 late in the second quarter.
Forbes and Bascoe were both in the lineup for the return trip at the Finn a little less than a month later, and out of the gate, Marquette was on fire. The Golden Eagles led 14-7 through seven minutes, but the defense went nite-nite for the next 13 minutes. Thus, Nova was up 38-26 at halftime. MU immediately clawed half of that lead back to open the third quarter, but they couldn’t do much more than that the rest of the way, and Nova got the 65-53 win. Bascoe went for 17 points, three rebounds, six assists, and a steal, while Forbes got held to three buckets during that early third quarter push as her only field goals of the game.
We can’t completely pin down the loss at Villanova to “if Forbes is better, Marquette wins,” that’s not how 12 point losses work. However, I think we can safely say that if Marquette can do better than 0-for-9 from long range — with seven misses from Forbes, Olivia Porter, and Kennedi Perkins — in a third meeting, things might be able to tilt towards the Golden Eagles. MU probably didn’t benefit from Villanova canning 47% of their three-point attempts along the way, including a 4-for-5 outing from Bronagh Power-Cassidy. She’s a 39% shooter this season — although only 29% in Big East games — so that’s something that MU has to worry about across a span of 40 minutes.
It’s also worth noting that BartTorvik.com marks that loss to Villanova as one of Marquette’s five worst performances of the season by way of the Game Score metric, four worst if you give them a pass for the opening night to UCF. Even Sunday’s 35 point loss to Connecticut was better. A lot better honestly, and much more on par with what Marquette has been putting up regularly since Big East play started. If Marquette can even out the rough edges and get a decent game on offense and a good game on defense, they can beat the Wildcats and keep their postseason ride going at least one more day.
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