The Golden Eagles look for a third straight victory on a road trip against a struggling Musketeers squad.
We are a looooooong way from saying anything super definitive about the 2024-25 Marquette women’s basketball season. Wednesday night’s game is the midway point of the Big East schedule for the Golden Eagles, so right now, they still have more league games left to play than they have already finished. That’s a lot of basketball still to go!
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In fairness to everyone else in the top 100 that’s not the 1-8 St. John’s Red Storm, Villanova fell nine spots in the NET by beating Xavier by 15 points at home in their most recent game, and Seton Hall dropped 13 spots because they got smushed into the ground by 60 points by UConn back on January 19th.
But Marquette’s 5-3 start to Big East play with three perfectly reasonable losses has the Golden Eagles at #63 in the NET as of Tuesday morning, trailing only #2 UConn and #33 Creighton. No one else is in the top 70. All of this is probably not super ideal for the league as a whole because it means that there are no true NCAA contenders outside of the top two teams, and having five sub-100 teams is also probably not great. However, we’re here to talk about how things are going for Marquette, not the league as a whole, and it’s hard to see the first 19 games of the season for the Golden Eagles as a general success for first year head coach Cara Consuegra.
It also doesn’t mean that Marquette can just sit back on their laurels and coast to the end of the season. MU’s probably going to end up on the outside looking in for the NCAA tournament, those losses to Bowling Green and UCF just keep getting worse. But at 13-6 overall and 5-3 in the Big East with what appears to be nine very winnable games left in front of them, a postseason appearance of some kind is absolutely on the table for Marquette.
Every game matters for Marquette, especially road games, especially road games against teams that just cost Villanova nine spots in the NET after a 15 point win. Take care of business, get ready for the next one, rinse, repeat.
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 #9: at Xavier Musketeers (6-14, 1-8 Big East)
Date: Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Time: 6pm Central
Location: Cintas Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 23-7 all time against Xavier. The series started back in 1985 and was pretty even through the first nine encounters. The Musketeers won three of the first five meetings between the two teams once XU joined the Big East, but the Golden Eagles have now won 16 straight in the series.
We have to say that things are going better for Xavier head coach Billi Chambers here in Year 2 than they were in Year 1. Last year, the Musketeers went 1-27 overall with an 0-18 record in Big East play. Bad, and not just because it was XU’s second straight winless conference slate. This year, Xavier has six wins overall and thanks to a 50-49 home conquest of Butler, they have a Big East victory. That is their only conference win in nine tries, but again: It snapped a streak of 50 straight losses to a Big East opponent, counting their one-and-done appearances on the first day of the conference tournament.
If we have to pick a thing that Xavier has going for them that’s going to cause problems for the Golden Eagles, it’s the Musketeers’ defense. Specifically, it’s their ability to generate turnovers. They’re not an elite ballclub in that regard, but when you’re sub-200 in the rankings from the NET, BartTorvik.com, and Her Hoop Stats, it’s notable when Torvik shows you at #77 at defensive turnover rate. The Musketeers have four women in the regular rotation averaging at least one steal per game, and they are led by Tae’lor Purvis at 2.3 per game. That has her in the top 150 in the country in terms of steal rate according to Her Hoop Stats. Marquette isn’t awful relative to the rest of the country when it comes to turnovers as they rank #187 in the country in offensive turnover rate according to BartTorvik.com, but coughing it up on more than 23% of possessions isn’t a fun way to go through life either. MU’s turnover rate is largely driven by Skylar Forbes, Olivia Porter, and Lee Volker all recording a turnover rate north of 24%. Forbes and Volker are MU’s top two usage players, while Porter’s turnover rate outpaces her assist rate. That’s not ideal, and against a Musketeers team that might be trying to pop the ball free a lot, that’s a big potential problem.
On the scoring end of the floor for Xavier, it’s hard to say that there are a lot of threats that Marquette has to worry about. Meri Kanerva is their top scorer……. at 10.3 points per game. Loren Christie is the only other woman averaging more than seven points per game. Part of this is pace, as Her Hoop Stats shows the Musketeers as one of the 60 slowest paced teams in the country. Another part of this might be Xavier trying to be a three-point dependent team, as HHS marks their attempt rate as #31 in the country. They’re shooting under 30% from long range as a team, and all three women with more than four attempts per game are shooting under 33% from deep. If Marquette can get the Musketeers to keep settling for the long ball, big picture, that’s probably going to work out for them.
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