The Wildcats outlasted the Golden Eagles in the Big East tournament quarterfinals
Last year, #5 Marquette knocked off #4 Villanova in a tightly contested Big East women’s basketball tournament quarterfinal game.
This year, same teams, seeds swapped, but the same 5 over 4 result in a pretty tightly contested game. Final Score: #5 Villanova 73, #4 Marquette 66. The Wildcats advance to Sunday’s semifinals against Connecticut, while Marquette heads home from the Mohegan Sun Casino.
It was a tightly contested game, we can say that for certain. Both teams led by three points at one juncture or another in the first half, which ended with Villanova up 32-29 thanks two two free throws by Jasmine Bascoe right before the horn. VU went on a bit of a tear to start the third quarter, scoring six of the first eight points and going up seven, but before the clock hit six minutes to go in the frame, Marquette had tied it back up at 38-all.
It was Villanova by four heading to the final 10 minutes, and for the first four-plus minutes, the margin just teetered between six and four points. Maddie Burke drained a three, one of five in the game for her, to make it an eight point Nova edge with 5:14 left. If Marquette had put in a field goal at some point in the next three minutes, I wonder if the result would have changed. Instead, all they could manage was three free throws, and then a quick 5 in a row from Bascoe had the Wildcats up 10 with 2:11 to play.
Marquette did not go quietly into the night, however. A three from Skylar Forbes cut the margin to 7 with under two to play, and Kennedi Perkins turned a steal into a layup to cut it to five with 81 seconds left. MU’s biggest problem was not getting it closer earlier as Nova could burn time and just play it even. A three from Forbes with 32 seconds left turned it into a four point game, but that would be MU’s final field goal of the contest.
Oh, and then the bad news: As MU tried to solve that 10 point deficit, Lee Volker went down with an apparent notable knee injury. In the immediate sense, that was a problem for Marquette, as Volker has hit 42% of her three-pointers this season. Having another floor stretcher could have been useful. In the future sense, it puts a real dampener on what MU might be able to do if their season continues.
How about some highlights, such as they are, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Fox Sports?
Up Next: A mystery, to say the least. ESPN’s Charlie Creme went into the day thinking Marquette was one of his First Four Out teams for the NCAA tournament, but that’s clearly going by the wayside now. At 20-10 overall, Marquette is clearly a candidate for the WBIT, which is the 32 team secondary postseason tournament that the NCAA runs. The first four teams out of the NCAA field and any regular season conference champions that don’t make the NCAA tourney all get automatic bids to the WBIT, so we’ll have to wait and see how that thing fills up between now and Sunday, March 16th.