The Golden Eagles head back out on the road to see if they can shake off their traveling doldrums against a team they lost to in Milwaukee.
In the last three games, Marquette women’s basketball has lost twice on the road. Both losses came against teams that Marquette beat in Milwaukee, although both victories were tightly contested at the final horn. With that being the case, I wondered if MU is just worse off away from the McGuire Center.
Thankfully, I can get away game splits on BartTorvik.com with the click of a mouse.
And the answer is….. not really!
The Golden Eagles aren’t noticeably worse on either end of the floor when it comes to any of the Four Factors — effective field goal percentage, turnover rate, offensive rebounding rate, or free throw rate — compared to their season long numbers, and they’re actually a little bit better at forcing turnovers in road games! They’re a little bit worse at defensive rebounding, but 28% vs 31% isn’t a monumental problem.
Marquette does get into a little bit of a problem when it comes to three-pointers, as they shoot them a little bit worse and give up a few more makes. It’s not a big gap on either end, but moving in both directions creates a gap for the Golden Eagles. But even that isn’t a terrible surprise, as it can just be handwaved as “MU is worse than their opponents at shooting on their opponents’ rims.”
In this case, it’s just closely contested games in Milwaukee went the other way on the road. That’s just how that goes sometimes when you’re a team that’s clearly not an NCAA tournament caliber squad, I guess. The flip side of it is also that Marquette can clearly point at things in both of those losses — rallying back from down 10 early against Butler and having a lead late, then a bad end of the first half against Nova — and say “hey, look, we know exactly what went wrong there.” It’s a recurring problem for Marquette that they keep having lapses that cost them games or at the very least put them in holes or into trouble in general. That’s what happens when you have a flawed basketball team, and MU has five more regular season games to go starting on Wednesday to show that they can put together 40 consistent minutes and finish up strong.
And also one game on the road against Connecticut, but let’s not worry about that one!
Big East Game #13: at Seton Hall Pirates (17-6, 9-3 Big East)
Date: Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Time: 6pm Central
Location: Walsh Gym, South Orange, New Jersey
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle, but not until after 6:30, that’s how it goes sometimes
Marquette is 20-12 all time against Seton Hall. The Pirates’ win earlier this season wasn’t just their first ever against the Golden Eagles in Milwaukee, it also snapped a three game MU winning streak in the series.
At a glance, it looks like Marquette just got clipped against Seton Hall in the first meeting this season. Low scoring at 58-52, 6 point margin, oh well, right? Here’s the thing about that, though: Marquette fell apart in the second quarter, getting outscored 23-9, and just a couple of minutes into the third, they were down 16, 39-23.
Now, the good news is that MU rallied and outscored Seton Hall by 10 for the final 18 minutes of the game, and it was a three point game with 2:33 to play. It’s not great news, because that still ended up in a loss and it’s largely because trailing by 16 is a bad plan to win. It should still allow Cara Consuegra to be able to tell her team “hey, if we just defend for 40 minutes, we have a chance to win this one.” Hard to argue with the point, y’know?
Marquette did a solid job across 40 minutes in terms of what they allowed, as you’d take 38% overall shooting and 29% three-point shooting every time. Jada Eads leading SHU in scoring with 20 points while going 8-for-18 overall and 3-for-5 behind the arc isn’t what you want, though. Eads is going to shoot those threes, she leads the team in attempts this season, but she’s only a 33% shooter on the year. It’s a bad break to catch a 60% game from her, but you have to stop her from getting clean looks if she’s shooting that many. MU caught a bad break on Ja’kahla Craft going 2-for-4 behind the arc in her 18 minutes of action. First, she’s playing 11 minutes per game on average, and 2) she’s shooting under 16% on the year right now, even after going 50/50 against the Golden Eagles. You can’t fault the squad for leaving her open, but it ended up burning them.
One thing that’s going to change how this game goes is the return of Savannah Catalon. When these teams met up the first time, Catalon missed her seventh straight game. That stretch would get to eight, but the 5’8” guard from Texas has been back in the lineup for the last five games. Catalon is averaging 14.0 points, 3.8 rebounds, 1.0 assists, and a massive 5.4 steals per game since her return to the lineup. The steals are explained by putting up 11 last time out against Xavier, but she still had six each against St. John’s and Butler. The non-steals numbers are pretty much what she was doing before the injury that kept her out, and even then she was averaging 2.5 swipes a night. In short, Catalon gives defenses something else to focus on, which makes life easier for both Eads and Faith Masonius.