The Golden Eagles host the Friars with a chance to lock up a bye to the Big East tournament quarterfinals.
I think it would be interesting if Marquette women’s basketball got to replay the UCF and Bowling Green games.
As I type this on Tuesday afternoon, Marquette stands at #57 in the BartTorvik.com rankings and #60 in the NCAA’s NET rankings. I think it’s safe to say that MU’s numbers boost up a little bit if those two road losses were to magically become wins by way of a replacement game. I don’t think that Marquette suddenly becomes an NCAA tournament contender if that happens — 1-4 in Quadrants 1 & 2 probably shoot that in the foot harder than the two Quadrant 4 losses — but my interest isn’t solely with the idea of getting the Golden Eagles into the NCAA tournament.
My curiosity lays with wondering exactly how far the Golden Eagles have come since falling 57-50 to the Knights in their first game of the season. How much has changed during Cara Consuegra’s first season since MU took a 64-62 loss on the road against the Falcons on December 18th?
The math says that they are. Marquette was #76 in the NET right before the Bowling Green game, they’re #60 now. They were #88 in Torvik going into that contest, they’re #57 now. Using the Torvik data filtering, Marquette has been playing like the #52 team in the country since that loss to BGSU. Not lightyears better, but y’know: Better is better. They’re a top 90 offense and a top 40 defense since then.
Feels like they might be able to get those games to go in another direction these days.
Oh, by the way: Marquette will clinch a bye to the Big East tournament quarterfinals with a win in this game. They’ve already clinched finishing in front of five teams in the league, and a win here will mean that they would at worst finish tied with the DePaul squad that they already hold the season series advantage against. Given that Marquette was picked to finish 10th in the preseason poll of the BE coaches, I’d say that locking up a top five finish is a pretty notable achievement for Consuegra’s inaugural campaign.
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 #15: vs Providence Friars (11-17, 4-11 Big East)
Date: Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Time: 6:30pm Central
Location: Al McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: FloSports, with Bob Brainerd and Chloe Marotta calling the action
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 26-6 all time against Providence. The Golden Eagles prevailed by 13 in Rhode Island earlier this season thanks to a big second half by Skylar Forbes to earn their 15th straight victory over the Friars.
I said it in the preview for the first game between these two teams, and I’ll say it again right now: Hey, remember when the Big East coaches voted Providence to finish in third behind UConn and Creighton this season? I remember! I remember it very clearly because while I thought that the Friars closed the season pretty decently, I didn’t think that they were going to get much better just because they returned a bunch of players from the year before.
I brought that point up back on January 21st, back when the Friars were 9-12 overall and 2-6 in Big East play coming into their home game with the Golden Eagles. Since Skylar Forbes tore them apart in the third quarter in that game, Providence has gone 2-4. In their defense, two of the losses were 1) at Creighton by 13 points and 2) at home against UConn by 37 points. FUN FACT: The UConn game was at the AMP, and they drew over 7,400 people for that game, which roughly works out to 6,600 UConn fans over PC’s usual per game average. Yay, I guess?
Anyway, Providence is coming off a 21 point loss at home to Seton Hall. That gave them their 11th Big East loss of the season, flying right past their 15th straight season with double digit losses in league play. FUN FACT: Providence hasn’t had a winning record in conference play since 1994. And the coaches picked them to finish third because….. they brought a lot of people back from a team that went 6-12 in the league after most of the exact same players went 4-16 in the league.
I’m not trying to be mean here. It’s been four months, and it still blows my mind that the league’s coaches collectively thought that PC was perhaps a fringe NCAA tournament contender.
I don’t have much else to say, because Marquette won the parts of the first game when Skylar Forbes wasn’t sitting with two fouls by a score of 52-36. I will say this: Marquette’s defense took Grace Efosa out of the first game completely. Well, okay, that’s unfair to the Friars, as Efosa took 14 field goal attempts in the game, so it’s not like MU erased the 5’11” guard from contributing. However, she made only two of those 14 shots. Her first bucket came about midway through the second quarter, scoring quickly in transition after a Marquette miss to pull the Friars within two, 23-21. Her second bucket came with 1:56 to play to cut the margin to 13, 65-52. If Marquette induces bad shots from Efosa again, they can make sure that things like “Olivia Olsen is 6-for-13” and “Mackayla Scarlett goes 5-for-7, including 3-for-4 behind the arc” don’t matter just like they didn’t matter in Rhode Island.
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