I’m starting putting this recap together early in the fourth quarter, because why wait?
Heading into Wednesday night’s road game against Xavier, I was taking the Musketeers seriously. Yes, they are clearly struggling this season, but they’re better than they were last year, and Marquette women’s basketball has not been the world’s most consistent basketball team this season.
And then Marquette was leading 16-4 at the end of the first quarter, even though the Golden Eagles shot just 6-for-16 from the field in the first 10 minutes.
Marquette scored the final seven points of the first half to lead 35-14 at halftime. The biggest lead of the third quarter was 27 points. Xavier did get an 8-0 run bridging the third quarter into the fourth, and then Marquette outscored the Musketeers 20-9 the rest of the way. A Skylar Forbes layup with 3:30 to go gave MU their biggest lead of the night at 31 points.
FINAL: Marquette 67, Xavier 38.
It’s not that it was over quickly, the actual game was over quickly. The final horn sounded on my FloSports feed at 7:46pm Central time. Elapsed time: 1 hour and 46 minutes. How’s that for efficiency?
Lee Volker is your top scorer for Marquette here, tallying up 20 points on 8-for-11 shooting including 4-for-5 behind the three-point arc. She also had a team high with seven rebounds and shared the team lead in steals with Halle Vice with four each. Vice also got to double digits in points with 13, while Skylar Forbes had 15. Olivia Porter was MU’s passing leader with six of the team’s 19 assists.
Oh! And this was Cara Consuegra’s first three game winning streak in Big East play. That’s fun.
Up Next: Marquette will be back in action with another road game this weekend. They’ll visit Villanova for a 1pm Central time tipoff on Sunday afternoon. Marquette beat Villanova 64-59 in Milwaukee earlier this month, and the Wildcats are coming off a 67-52 win over this same Xavier team back on Saturday.