The Golden Eagles roll past the Jaguars for not just Cara Consuegra’s first win over a Division 1 opponent, but the first consecutive wins in her tenure as head coach.
There are two distinct segments of Marquette women’s basketball’s 83-50 victory over IU Indy on Sunday afternoon at the McGuire Center.
There’s the first six minutes where the Jaguars made their first five three-point attempts of the game for all of their offense to that point of the game. That offense did give them a 15-13 lead over the Golden Eagles.
Then there’s the remaining 34 minutes of action in which the Golden Eagles outscored the visitors 70-35. IU Indy from long range in that stretch? Just 2-for-18, as they just kept hammering away at that, and it just kept coming up emptier and emptier. IU Indy wouldn’t hit their sixth three-pointer of the game until the 1:34 mark of the second quarter, and that one pulled them back within 10, 37-27. #7? 5:07 left in the fourth, 68-45 Marquette leads.
You get the idea here.
Marquette didn’t win because IU Indy suddenly stopped hitting every three-pointer, though. They won because they forced 17 turnovers from the Jaguars. They won because they held the Jaguars to less than 0.70 points per possession for the whole 40 minutes, largely because IU Indy also shot just 10-for-34 from inside the arc. They won because they could not be denied on the interior themselves, hitting 25-for-48 on twos in the entire game while only shooting 2-for-7 from three-point land for the first three quarters. They won because Halle Vice was unstoppable for the first 20 minutes, getting 14 points and eight rebounds, and then when IU Indy reconfigured to slow her down — Vice finished with 14 points and 11 rebounds for her first career double-double — Vice’s gravitational pull made things a little easier for everyone else. See also: Skylar Forbes had eight of her 15 points in the third quarter alone, which is right after IU Indy had a few minutes in the locker room to chat about what Halle Vice was doing to them.
All told, it was exactly the kind of thing a coach would love: An easy run away 33 point victory that required the team to overcome at least a little adversity along the way.
I don’t know if you’ll get head coach Cara Consuegra to particularly celebrate this one, but it was her first victory as MU head coach over a Division 1 opponent after crushing D2 Illinois Springfield last week. Still, this win combined with the UIS win means Consuegra now has consecutive wins for the first time as head coach of the Golden Eagles, so that’s something to celebrate.
How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and FloSports?
Up Next: Well, at least they can celebrate until the next one. Marquette has a bit of a challenge in front of them this coming weekend. They’ll be out in New Jersey for the Battle On The Banks where they’ll face hosting Rutgers at 1pm Central time on Friday, and then Maryland Eastern Shore in Rutgers’ barn on Saturday at 3:30pm CT. Friday’s game will be on Big Ten Network, but you’ll need B1G+ to watch on Saturday. Rutgers is 4-2 so far this year after losing 66-49 at home to Princeton on Sunday afternoon, while Maryland Eastern Shore is 3-2 but 0-2 against Division 1 squads. They’ll play Dayton and Illinois on Monday and Tuesday before coming out to New Jersey over the weekend.