At a glance, it looks like a near miss for the Golden Eagles, but they were fighting against their own mistakes all game long.
If you’re just scrolling results from Wednesday night around college basketball, then you’ll see Marquette women’s basketball leaving D.J. Sokol Arena in Omaha with a 71-68 loss to Creighton and say “hey, look at that, Marquette gave Creighton a fight, that’s interesting, good for them.”
That’s not wrong…..
…… but it’s definitely not the story of what happened in this game.
What happened in this game is Marquette turned the ball over five times in the first quarter to end up in a 13-13 tie with the Bluejays after 10 minutes. The fact that Creighton coughed it up four times themselves probably helped there, and you know what a lot of the turnovers were all night long? Traveling calls. An almost weird amount of traveling calls. Not saying they’re wrong, but there was a lot of them.
Quarter #2 went 24-13 in favor of the Bluejays, and I bet you can figure out what I’m going to say next. Yep, 10 turnovers for Marquette — a turnover per minute is bad, guys — and just three for the home team. 37-26 at intermission, and to be honest about it, things didn’t actually get bad until the final three minutes. Creighton ripped off an 11-3 run in that time, so that’s the majority of their 11 point halftime advantage.
Third quarter: One Marquette turnover, which came on their very last possession of the frame. Only one for Creighton as well, but MU’s ability to hit shots against CU’s defense when they weren’t turning it over in the first half kept applying here, and the Golden Eagles had carved three points off that 11 point halftime margin. Well, they did by the end of the quarter at least. Creighton had an 8-2 burst early in the quarter that left them up 15, so Marquette actually slashed that lead in half by the end of the period. One of those “glad we did it, not happy we had to” situations.
And that brings us to the fourth quarter. To review: Marquette threw 15 first half possessions straight in the garbage can but was neck-and-neck with Creighton for most of the first 20 minutes. They lost control of the game for about six minutes bridging halftime for a 19-7 Bluejays run that pushed the margin to 15. Whatever happens in the fourth quarter has to overcome the weight of the missed opportunities from the first 30 minutes.
And it looked like Marquette was gassing out. Morgan Maly tacked on two more of her eight three-pointers in the game, and a lickety-split transition bucket from Lauren Jensen shoved Creighton’s lead back to 14 with 5:21 to go. Yeah, okay, time to wrap it up, I guess……. except Skylar Forbes got left behind on that Jensen break, and she cherry picked a bucket. Jaidynn Mason plucked a Jensen pass out of the air and went straight to the rim. 10 point game, just barely under five minutes left.
Molly Mogensen scored in the paint on the ensuing possession….. for what would be Creighton’s final field goal of the game.
Two freebies from Mason, a bucket from Halle Vice, eight point game, 3:37 left.
Kiani Lockett split a pair of free throws at the 3:10 mark for Creighton’s last point of the game. Mason at the line again, Kennedi Perkins bullying her way to the rim after Jensen was whistled for traveling — remember I said they kept calling it tight all game long? — and Mason got to the rim clean with 1:15 to go to make it a three point game.
71-68, so you can tell that no one else scored. But Marquette got the stop they needed. They had 22 seconds to get a shot to tie it. Was a top of the arc three from Mason the designed or desired shot from the Marquette bench? Maybe not, she came into the night shooting just 3-for-9 on the season. But also she had eight of her 18 points in the final quarter, so there’s worse places to go than someone who’s been watching the ball go through the net for the last nine minutes.
Did Marquette come up short, maybe quite literally as Mason’s shot hit front iron and that was that? Sure, but it wasn’t because of what happened with Mason’s shot. Marquette’s problems in this game happened long before that final play. Playing with heart to stay in it is great…. but Marquette needs to figure out how to play that way in the first 20 minutes, too.
How about some highlights, such as they are, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and FloSports?
Up Next: That was Marquette’s last notable test of the Big East schedule. You can argue that the Golden Eagles have a chance to win each of their next 13 games, all the way up to their regular season finale against Connecticut. That 13 game quest to clinch a winning league record heading into the finale begins on Saturday when MU returns home to host Villanova. Tipoff is set for 2pm Central, and FloSports will have the broadcast. The Wildcats are coming off a 77-62 road win over Georgetown on Wednesday, and that got them back to .500 on the season.
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