That’s A Rally: Marquette 74, #4 Drake 69

The Golden Eagles come back from down 10 at the half to advance to the second round of the WBIT.

Marquette women’s basketball spent most of the second quarter of Thursday’s WBIT first round game losing track of Drake’s Abbie Aalsma. The 44% three-point shooter knocked down all three of her long range attempts as the #4 seeded Bulldogs switched a Marquette four point lead at the end of the first quarter to a 10 point home team advantage at halftime. That’s a 24-10 second quarter margin, and obviously quite the defensive misfire for a Golden Eagles squad that’s done most of their winning in Cara Consuegra’s first season because of what they’ve done in terms of getting stops.

But we’ve seen Marquette buckle down and turn games around again and again this season, so even down 10 in Des Moines, it was hard to say that this game was over at intermission.

It’s certainly safe to say that Cara Consuegra’s halftime marching orders were exactly what the doctor ordered.

Marquette opened up the second quarter with a 9-3 advantage in the first 2:30, and just kept pushing it from there. Two free throws from Halle Vice chopped the margin down to just three points as the clock passed the midway point of the quarter, and a 6-0 Marquette run was the back half of a 10-2 burst. The last four points of that came from Jaidynn Mason, on her way to scoring 14 of her 16 points in the second half, and hey, look at that: Marquette was up, 51-50.

Drake has some offensive options in their arsenal, so they went into the final 10 minutes with a 56-55 lead. The two sides traded some buckets, and it was looking like things were really going to come down to the wire. Marquette bounced out to a five point lead with 2:20 to play, but Aalsma had one more three-pointer in her, and two free throws from leading scorer Katie Dinnebier meant everything was tied up at 69 as the clock hit 60 seconds to play.

Time for someone to make a play to win, and I suspect you know who came up big. Yep, it was Jaidynn Mason, getting to the elbow of the lane and rising and firing, clean as a sheet. Vice came up with the rebound on the other end, and that was going to let Marquette burn most of the clock.

Not all of it, though, and even assisted by a timeout from Cara Consuegra, MU couldn’t get off a shot that hit iron to keep that clock moving. That gave Drake a chance, after a timeout of their own, to inbound in front of their own bench with six seconds to find a shot to tie or win.

Abbie Aalsma threw a crosscourt pass out of bounds.

Just absolutely no one home on the other end. MU inbounds, Skylar Forbes hits two free throws, Marquette by four, that’s your ball game, and that’s Cara Consuegra’s first postseason victory as Marquette head coach after the Golden Eagles came up short in the Big East quarterfinals.

It’s important to say this out loud: Marquette scored 1.16 points per possession in the second half….. and allowed just 0.76 per trip for Drake. There’s that Marquette defense I was talking about.

Jaidynn Mason was the driving offensive force of the second half, and she ended up adding three rebounds and a team high six assists to her afternoon. Skylar Forbes and Halle Vice tied for the team high in scoring here with 18 each. Forbes added four rebounds, while Vice grabbed up five, including three on the offensive glass. Olivia Porter only scored four points, but she had a team high seven rebounds.

Lee Volker was back in the lineup after leaving the Big East tournament late with a leg injury. She played 35 minutes here, albeit with a leg sleeve on, and she finished with nine points a rebound, and two assists. It was very nice to get to see her go out on her own terms, and even that has to wait for at least one more game.

How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and ESPN+?

Up Next: We know that Marquette’s Round of 16 game in the WBIT will be on Sunday, March 23, but the rest is up in the air. Most of that will get decided by tonight’s game between #1 seed James Madison and Davidson, which tips off at 6pm Central time. It’s safe to say that MU will head to Virginia to play the Dukes if they win, but I have no idea what happens if the Wildcats come out victorious.