PLUS! Skylar Forbes & Lee Volker earn All-Big East honors.
With the Big East tournament set to start on Friday, the conference had to get the end of season awards for women’s basketball out the door on Thursday. The Big East coaches voted — although they couldn’t vote for themselves or their players — and lo and behold Marquette Golden Eagles’s Cara Consuegra was named Co-Coach of the Year!
As you can see, Marquette’s head coach is sharing the award with UConn’s Geno Auriemma. Here’s how the league office wrote it up:
Auriemma was selected BIG EAST Co-Coach of the Year presented by Invesco QQQ for the 13th time after leading the Huskies to their 12th undefeated BIG EAST finish. The Huskies enter postseason play as the No. 1 seed in the league’s tournament with a 28-3 overall mark and top five rankings in both national polls. Consuegra, first-year head coach at Marquette, earns the co-coach of the year nod after leading the Golden Eagles to the four seed in the BIG EAST Women’s Basketball Tournament. The squad reached 20 wins in 28 games, tied for the second-fastest road to 20 wins by a first-year head coach in program history.
And here’s some extra details from the Marquette press release:
Consuegra guided Marquette to a 20-win regular season in her first year as head coach. The Golden Eagles finished with a 13-2 at the Al McGuire Center, tied for the best home record by a Marquette first-year head coach.
Marquette reached 20 wins in 28 games, tied for the second-fastest road to 20 wins by a first-year head coach in program history with Terri Mitchell. Consuegra was an assistant coach for Mitchell at Marquette from 2004-11.
Consuegra becomes the fourth Marquette head coach to win conference coach of the year, joining Mitchell (BIG EAST 2007, Conference USA 1998, 2000), Carolyn Kieger (BIG EAST 2018) and Megan Duffy (2020).
Consuegra also tied Mitchell for the most wins in February in her first year with six. She earned her fifth BIG EAST road win of the season on Saturday, Jan. 25 at Georgetown, the most conference road wins by a first-year head coach in program history.
Let’s go live to the Marquette women’s basketball team meeting room to see the team’s reaction to finding out that Consuegra was tabbed as the best coach in the league this season. (It’s the second slide on the IG post, and Consuegra briefly talking to her team after the announcement is the third slide.)
By the way: Nice work by Athletic Director Mike Broeker to properly build up his little speech there to properly generate the pop from the team.
I would like to talk about the fact that Consuegra is sharing the award with Auriemma for a second. The tie itself isn’t the interesting part. It’s the fact that it’s mathematically impossible to get the 11 coaches to split right down the middle. At best, Consuegra and Auriemma each got five votes while one of the coaches — possibly Consuegra or Auriemma, as they didn’t have to vote for each other! — turned in the 11th vote for someone else. If I had to guess, it would be votes for Seton Hall’s Tony Bozzella that fill in the gap. Auriemma’s votes are because his team was picked to be awesome and they have been. Consuegra’s votes are because her team was picked — by the coaches! — to finish 10th and they’re the #4 seed in the Big East tournament. Bozzella’s Pirates were picked to finish seventh in the conference in the preseason poll and finished third by a game in front of Marquette, making SHU and MU the only two teams in the league who were notably overachieving their preseason placement.
ELSEWHERE IN BIG EAST AWARDS!
Marquette had two women make it to the All-Big East teams. Sophomore forward Skylar Forbes is First Team All-Big East, while senior guard Lee Volker earned Second Team All-Big East honors.
The Big East didn’t do much in the way of writing up the all-conference players, so we turn to the Marquette press release, first for Forbes:
Skylar Forbes was named to the All-BIG EAST First Team, the ninth sophomore in program history to be named first team all-conference. Forbes led the Golden Eagles in scoring at 15.1 points per game and had six 20-point games. The Markham, Ontario native scored in double-figures in 23-of-28 games and led the BIG EAST in blocks with 52 on the season, one away from tying the program’s single season record.
And for Volker:
Lee Volker was named to the All-BIG EAST Second Team. The senior averaged career-bests 13.1 points and 4.8 rebounds per game while starting in all 29 games during the regular season. The Purcellville, Virginia native scored in double-figures in 20-of-29 games this season and had a career-high 24 points in the road win at Seton Hall.
I don’t want to be dismissive of Lee Volker’s accomplishments here, as she had a hell of a final campaign in blue and gold. HOWEVER, I have to note that the Big East announced a First Team with ELEVEN women on it, although it should have only been 10 but there was a tie in the voting somewhere. This is ridiculous. Just put out a First, Second, and Third Team with five women each. No one’s going to jump up and down about it…… especially when four of the First Teamers were unanimous choices. It creates a clear and obvious “these are the REAL First Team honorees” situation, which is very silly and easily avoidable.
For more on the awards and the full rundown of each of the individual honorees like Most Improved and Sixth Woman, you can read the Big East press release right here.
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