The Golden Eagles head to Indianapolis with a shot at locking in a better finish than the Big East preseason poll.
It is time to revisit the Big East women’s basketball preseason poll.
Marquette was picked to finish 10th out of 11 teams in the Big East back in the fall. They trailed #9 DePaul 24-23 in the polling, but 10th is 10th. No way to get around the facts of what it was.
You guys know how to calculate magic numbers for standings? How many wins you are away from clinching something? Take the number of games in the schedule, add 1, subtract your team’s wins and the trailing team’s losses. That’s your magic number.
For Marquette, their magic number to clinch a 9th place finish or better this season is currently 2.
18 game schedule plus 1 = 19
19 minus Marquette’s seven wins = 12
12 minus the current 10th place team’s 10 losses = 2
Magic number to clinch ninth or better is 2.
Why is this important? Because it’s not just your wins, it’s also losses by the trailing team that count towards taking a step off the magic number. So, it’s any combination of Marquette wins and losses by the team currently in 10th place that equals 2 that clinches 9th or better for the Golden Eagles.
Butler is in 10th right now.
Butler is Sunday’s opponent.
A Marquette win would mean a Butler loss. That’s 1 and 2, and taa-daa, that’s clinching ninth place or better, and doing it with six games to go to boot.
Not too shabby.
REMINDER: Marquette’s home contests are streamed nearly exclusively on FloSports, and the same goes for almost all Big East home games and almost all league schedule contests. If you are paying full price for FloSports at $30 a month, you are doing it wrong. Please use this link to pay $20 via the new-ish FloCollege offering.
Big East Game #12: at Butler Bulldogs (12-13, 2-10 Big East)
Date: Sunday, February 9, 2025
Time: 1pm Central
Location: Hinkle Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, Indiana
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Marquette is 23-9 all time against Butler. The first ever meeting was in 1986, and like all of the first four, the Bulldogs came away victorious. Since 1991, Marquette has lost just five times and comes into this one on a ten game winning streak against Butler after a season sweep last year and a win in Milwaukee earlier this season.
If the Marquette defense from the first six minutes of the first meeting between these two teams shows up for 40 minutes on Sunday, Butler is totally hosed. Marquette forced six turnovers in six minutes in that first meeting while coming up with 11 consecutive stops to start the game. You will notice that I specified the defense there, and no, I don’t expect a shutout if MU pulls that kind of effort for 40 minutes. Things happen. But that kind of effort for 40 minutes goes a long way towards winning. However, MU’s offense needs to figure things out in a big way because MU was up just 5-0 while making 11 straight stops through six minutes. Marquette had to rally to beat Butler 57-54 in the first meeting because they didn’t take advantage of those stops to build a massive and insurmountable lead. That let the Bulldogs easily wander back into the contest and in fact lead by four at the start of the fourth quarter and by five during the final frame. It wasn’t great!
But that was kind of a long time ago in basketball time, to the point where that was Game #3 of the Big East schedule and eight games have happened since then for Marquette. Eight have gone by for Butler as well, and the Bulldogs did pretty well for themselves in the wake of that loss to MU. They snagged a pair of 10 point home wins over Providence and Georgetown to snap a 0-4 start to Big East play. All right, not too bad Butler, what else you got in there?
Losing to Xavier by one point on the road is what else they got in there. Hey, it could have been worse for the Bulldogs, as Xavier was up 11 early in the second quarter. That 50-49 contest is Xavier’s only Big East victory through 12 games.
It was also the start of a streak of six straight losses for Butler. In fairness, they fell by just nine at home to Creighton, and went down in overtime at home against DePaul. Then again, they were also up 11 midway through the fourth quarter, so maybe not so much with the “credit for fighting” here. They also lost by 42 to UConn, but hey, that’s still better than the 60 that the Huskies hung on Seton Hall. BU is coming off a 63-59 loss to Villanova back on Wednesday, and the good news is that they immediately fell behind by 13 — no, really, I said good news — before immediately wiping that Wildcats lead out and spending most of the contest out in front before eventually losing. Points for effort, I guess?
Then again, the ol’ BartTorvik.com data sorter says that the Bulldogs have been playing like the #177 team in the country during this six game skid. #199 on offense, #163 on defense.
In fairness to Butler, they’ve been without Caroline Strande for almost all of Big East play, as she got 11 minutes worth of run in in their first game against Seton Hall and hasn’t played since. That’s 13.4 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 1.6 assists per game that they’re trying to find somewhere else, not to mention she helped stretch the floor as a 37% long range shooter.
Now Kilyn McGuff is BU’s only double digit scorer overall as well as during Big East action. Credit to her: She’s nearly at a double-double per game against league foes at 13.6 points and 9.2 rebounds per game while knocking down over 41% of her three-point attempts, but there’s just not enough anywhere else on this roster to really help McGuff out. Sydney Jaynes is BU’s next best scorer at 8.1 ppg against Big East squads, Lily Carmody and Lily Zeinstra tie for the second best rebounding average in Big East contests, and Karsyn Norman’s 2.4 assists per game are tops on the squad in the last 12 games. Even when McGuff goes for 18 points and 17 rebounds plus three steals — as she did against Marquette in Milwaukee — that’s not enough to find a pathway to a win for the Bulldogs.
Marquette has to find a game plan for shutting McGuff down. Obviously they didn’t have one that worked the first time around, and they dang near took a loss because of it. Of course, “pressing your advantage while you have it” is a solid game plan as well, and if MU had just taken a bigger lead while getting 11 straight stops to start the game the first time around, nothing that McGuff did would have mattered.
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