I think there’s a bit of a connective thread to all three questions. If #1 and #2 go well, then #3 is a yes.
#1 — When is Meg Bireley going to break the Marquette career points and goals records?
Let’s start with the records. Shea Garcia is Marquette’s all time leader in points with 220. Grace Gabriel holds the career goals record with 175.
Meg Bireley starts 2025 with 180 points, which is #4 all time. She got there on 144 goals, which is also #4 all time.
MATH: Bireley needs 41 points to break Garcia’s record and 32 goals to break Gabriel’s record.
At her career pace of 3.33 points per game, she’ll get past Garcia in Game #13 of the season, which is at Villanova on April 6th. Bireley’s career pace of 2.67 goals per game has her set to pass Gabriel in Game #12 of the year, which is at home against Denver on April 2nd.
Bireley has gotten better at both points and goals per game in each of her first three seasons with the Golden Eagles. I’m not going to expect her to improve on her better than 4-per rate in either category from last season, but the fact of the matter is that if she holds up that rate this season, she’ll get to both records faster. That would be Game #10 for points and Game #8 for goals.
I do want to point out one thing here. Meg Bireley is about to prove a point I was making back in 2023. That was when both Shea Garcia and Lydia Foust (#2 all time in points with 205) became the first two Marquette women to ever record 200 points in a career….. with both women doing it during their COVID bonus year of eligibility. Those two finished their careers with 79 and 77 games played respectively, whereas Bireley is going to wrap up the 2025 regular season with 70 games played if she appears in all 16 scheduled contests.
At the time, I said that it was fair to treat Garcia and Foust’s marks as legitimate because eventually someone was going to come along and defeat their records because MU was going to catch fire and have repeated strong postseason runs. Bireley — who played with Garcia and Foust for two seasons! — has a chance to do what I was saying without the bonus of a year or two or three of extra postseason games. It doesn’t make her potential records more legitimate than the current all-time marks, but it’s nice to see that it’s happening this way.
#2 — What needs more improvement from last year: Field Defense or Goalkeeping?
The answer can be both, of course. We should say that before we get going.
I don’t think it’s stepping out of line to say that Marquette earned an at-large bid to the 2023 NCAA tournament because they set program records for points, goals, assists, and shots on the offensive end of the field, not to mention draw controls. The Golden Eagles were not an elite defensive team that season, not even within the context of their own history. That year is #5 all time in program history in goals-against average and save percentage.
Things went backwards in 2024, though. The offense wasn’t record breaking, but that’s not a surprise relative to the law of averages. That’s fine, as long as you can support it on the other end of the field, and MU couldn’t do that.
Brynna Nixon’s play in net resulted in Mikayla Yang starting three times as a freshman in 2024 as MU saw the team goals-against average go from 11.97 to 14.54. Save percentage went from .399 to .321.
We can’t pin it all on the goalie though, especially not with both Nixon and Yang returning in 2025. Marquette averaged 17.42 ground balls per game in 2023, but 16.59 in 2024. Caused turnovers went down as well, going from 8.53 to 7.71 per game.
It’s connected, to a certain degree. If Marquette’s field defense in front of the net gets a little bit more cantankerous, the shots from opponents get a little bit more desperate and a little bit worse. As shot quality goes down, the ease of saves goes up, save percentage goes up, goals against average goes down. You can have one without the other, of course, but it’s going to be up to head coach Meredith Black to figure out how to activate at least one side of the equation this season. Bringing in transfer Devon Ortman to play defense does tell us that Black is looking for answers to this question, but we’ll have to see what happens on the field.
#3 — Is this a Big East tournament team?
Last year, Marquette missed the four team Big East tournament because they lost their regular season finale to Villanova, 17-14. That contest left VU at 3-3 in the league and MU at 2-4. Nova got the #4 seed, Marquette was left out at #5 in the standings. That contest was also MU’s only truly competitive Big East game as they lost by 14, 10, and 7 goals in their other losses and won by 8 and 17 goals in their two wins.
It’s reasonable to think that 2025 is going to go roughly like 2024 did. Denver’s probably going to be great, Butler and Xavier are probably going to struggle. If MU falls as “clearly in between those two extremes,” then that’s a 2-1 record right there and leaves the games against Villanova, Georgetown, and UConn to determine which three of these four teams get into the tourney field with Denver.
The Big East coaches seem to think that UConn is a little bit ahead of the other three contenders here, as they finished just four points behind Denver in the preseason poll. Villanova, Georgetown, and Marquette were separated by just six points, so if that’s not a “I dunno” dart throw of a situation, I don’t know what is.
In a bit of a quirk of the schedule, Marquette goes Villanova-UConn-Georgetown down the stretch of Big East play. They’re going to know what they need as they go into each successive game at the very least. 1-2 in that run will probably put Marquette in. 2-1 almost definitely will.
Can they do it? Might come down to what the answers to Question #2 end up as, right?
Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media
Facebook: AnonymousEagle
Instagram: AnonymousEagleSBN
Bluesky: AnonymousEagle