The Golden Eagles go out to South Orange and come up big in the third quarter to get revenge for their loss to the Pirates earlier this season.
When Marquette women’s basketball found themselves up 16-14 at the end of the first quarter after leading 10-2 out of the gate, I was a little nervous about how the next 30 minutes was going to go. After all, MU’s not exactly the biggest and best offensive team in the country, and the defense just let the Pirates back into the game.
Lee Volker opened up the second quarter with five of her new career high 24 points to get the margin back to seven…. and Seton Hall wiped it out, tying the game at 21 on a Faith Masonius jumper. Marquette immediately answered with six straight, and over the final 5:36 of the half, the Golden Eagles couldn’t do better than one field goal. It came from Volker with just nine seconds left, and then MU couldn’t stop the ball and Jada Eads went all the way to the rack for two of her game high 26 points. All tied at 30 at the midway point.
Again with the nervousness about whether Marquette had the offensive horses to solve this riddle.
8-1 run early in the third quarter for Seton Hall, and it’s 38-33 Pirates, and hooooooboy, the vibes were super off as to which way this game was tilting.
And then, seemingly with no regard for life or humanity, Marquette ripped off a 21-6 run. Technically, it’s an 11-0 run to take a six point lead, Seton Hall hitting two threes to wipe that lead away, and then another 10 straight for Marquette. 54-44 with nine seconds left, and once again, MU couldn’t slow the Pirates down for nine seconds and a Kaydan Lawson layup made it visitors by eight heading to the fourth.
Early in the period, Marquette knocked the lead back to 12, and they pushed it there a couple of times in the quarter. One of those was at the 5:08 mark when Skylar Forbes spun to the rim for a layup…. and that was MU’s final field goal of the game. They closed the contest out with six free throws, two each from Volker, Jaidynn Mason, and Halle Vice, and that cut off any last chance of rallying for the Pirates. They did manage to trim the margin to just five points, 64-59, with 1:39 to go, but that’s as close as it got.
What was I so worried about anyway? Marquette held a 1.12 points per possession for/0.91 against advantage in the second half, largely because of that 21-6 run. We can’t forget about Seton Hall sending Marquette to the free throw line 22 times in the second half. Yeah, they only shot 64%, which is bad, but the conglomeration of SHU fouls led to Amari Wright and Kaydan Lawson fouling out and Faith Masonius nearly joining them. That had to pay off at least a little bit relative to Marquette being able to operate on offense. A couple extra fouls here and there, and all of a sudden, you’re playing a little bit more lax on the defensive side, and your opponent — Marquette in this case — can start scoring ever so slightly easier.
As mentioned, Lee Volker got to 24 points, which is a new career high for her. She had a great game, connecting on 8 of her 10 field goal attempts, and she went 6-for-7 from the charity stripe as well. Halle Vice chipped in 19 points on 8-for-12 shooting, and she added 13 rebounds for a double-double here. Vice nearly had a bad triple-double, as she finished the game with a whopping seven turnovers. Seven, when MU had 15 as a team, is a lot. Skylar Forbes had a rough night shooting the ball, but she still got to 11 points and just barely missed a double double of her own with nine rebounds.
How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and FloSports?
Up Next: The Golden Eagles return to Milwaukee for their next two games, and first up is DePaul. Tipoff on Saturday, February 15, is set for 2pm Central, and FloSports will have the broadcast. The Blue Demons are 7-7 in Big East action after taking a 62-56 loss at home to Villanova on Wednesday evening.