We’ve got six new faces, so we’re going to split this up into two parts, with the two JuCo prospects combining with the guard that’s already familiar with Cara Consuegra here.
Hello, everybody!
We’re continuing to get closer and closer to the start of the Marquette women’s basketball season — Media Day is tomorrow, as you’re reading this for the first time — so we should probably start digging a little bit deeper into the roster to see what’s going on in Cara Consuegra’s first season in charge. We’ve already looked at the six players returning from last year’s team, so go check that out if you haven’t already.
This time around, we’re going to start looking at the newcomers on the roster. Yes, I said start. We’ve got six of them, and that’s a lot, and we’ve got some room to stretch out before the season starts against UCF. This week, we’ll look at the two players that Cara Consuegra brought in from the junior college ranks along with the transfer she brought with her from Charlotte. Next week, we’ll look at the other three transfers, so stop on by to check that out as well.
Let’s get started, shall we?
Olivia Porter
I don’t know if Olivia Porter has any high level foreign language skills in her bag, but one of her roles on this year’s Marquette team might end up being “translator.” The 5’8” guard from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has followed Cara Consuegra from Charlotte to Marquette over the offseason. She started all 31 games for the 49ers last season after transferring over from Michigan State, so helping explain what Consuegra’s talking about to the other 11 players may be part of her job duties here.
As for what she’s bringing to the court, it’s probably important to understand that Porter was not by any means the star of the show in Charlotte. She was fifth on the team in scoring at 6.2 points and sixth on the team in rebounding at 3.5 per game. Porter did lead the 49ers in assists, and 3.5 assists per game doesn’t sound particularly awesome off the jump, but I have some context for you. In games against Division 1 foes, Porter averaged 3.3 assists, and that was #239 in the county according to Her Hoop Stats. In terms of assist rate, HHS has her at #345 in the country, and so we have to note that Porter did play over 31 minutes a game. Yes, it’s not knock you over with a feather stuff, but top 300 in total and top 400 in rate is pretty good.
But this is where we have to talk about the part where Porter averaged nearly three turnovers a game. That works out to a turnover rate of 31.8%, and generally speaking, anything over 20% is not ideal. When you’re talking about a team that’s kind of maybe still needing name tags at this point of the preseason so everyone knows everyone else’s name, that’s bad. Lack of familiarity with teammates can lead to not sloppy play, but teeny misunderstandings that lead to passes sailing or at the very least tipped out of bounds.
Let’s hope that her shooting touch carries over. Porter hit 36% from long range for the 49ers last season, and that’s essentially what we saw from Jordan King last year as the third best shooter on the roster. She only shot it 1.8 times per game though, so there is a question to be asked about what happens if Consuegra asks Porter to start getting a little more aggressive and/or less selective with her shot.
I do need to point out that until we see different, we should probably expect Porter to start on opening night against UCF. Porter was one of the five that started off the open scrimmage section against the practice players, so at the very least, that seems to be the starting five that Consuegra is expecting to run with out of the gate.
Aryelle Stevens
It seems that Aryelle Stevens may be the biggest beneficiary of Cara Consuegra making the move from Charlotte to Marquette. The 6’1” forward was committed and signed to play for the 49ers for the 2024-25 season, as the team announced her Letter of Intent last November. Now, instead of heading to Charlotte to play in the American Athletic Conference, she’s going to be suiting up in the Big East. It’s a credit to Stevens that Consuegra made getting her on board to be a priority, or at least that’s what appeared to be the case. Stevens was the first newcomer to make their name known after Consuegra took the job, so it’s clear that she was completely on board with making the move after the door opened to her.
Stevens has been at Gulf Coast State College in the junior college ranks for the past two seasons. She went for 7.8 points and 5.6 rebounds as a freshman, connecting on over 60% of her shots across 16 games. In terms of continuity on the roster, that season presents an interesting connection, as returning player Abbey Cracknell was at GCSC for that season as well. As a sophomore, Stevens put up 9.0 points, 7.4 rebounds, 1.6 assists, and 1.0 steals. The multi-dimentional play spreads around more as the Commodores let her fire off 77 three-point attempts in 33 games. However, she was not very good at shooting the threes at under 25%, so either A) Consuegra and her staff have to find a way to get that north of 30% to make Stevens a threat or B) convince her that this is not a good way to go through life. If she’s going to connect at somewhere north of 55% inside the arc — 57% after that 60% as a freshman — then Stevens’ ability to score inside is too valuable to be wasting shots that aren’t going in.
We should point out that when the team was split in half during the open scrimmage, 6 women per side, Stevens was the one who ended up on the bench to start the proceedings. Based on the distribution of players, that would put Stevens behind Cracknell, Halle Vice, and Charia Smith in terms of forwards on the roster. Of course, that was in early October, and even Consuegra said that things were still very early in the team building process.
Ayuen Akot
I have to say that the addition of Ayuen Akot was a little bit surprising when it came across the internet wires in early June. By that point, it had been a little over two weeks since Marquette had announced any new additions, and even though that left four open spots on the roster, the Golden Eagles still had 11 players signed up for this fall. You’d like to have more in case of injuries and so forth, but when you’re six weeks after the coaching change and time had started to pass, and the team had put out press releases covering everyone….. well, you can see how it seemed like that was going to be it.
But nope, there’s Ayuen Akot’s announcement in early June, bringing the roster to 12 for this season. The 5’11” forward comes to Marquette from the junior college ranks after spending two seasons with Frank Phillips College in Texas. She put up some pretty good numbers as a freshman with 7.1 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 1.2 assists per games. As a sophomore, Akot moved along to 12.5 points, 6.1 rebounds, 1.2 assists, and more than a steal. Part of the boosts there was merely her minutes jumping upwards from 15.7 per game to 25.0, but getting her three-point shooting from 23% as a freshman to 33% as a sophomore helped, too.
The question I have about Akot’s contributions this year comes down to the timing of things here. The fact of the matter is that Akot would have been eligible to be a Division 1 recruit coming out of her junior college years the whole time. Somehow, she made it all the way along to the beginning of June before she announced that she was joining the Golden Eagles. This seems like she didn’t have much in the way of Division 1 prospects until Consuegra started looking around to fill out her roster, doesn’t it? If that’s the case, how ready is she to contribute notable minutes as a junior this season?
Continuing that point: Akot was the player sitting on the opposite bench from Aryelle Stevens when the split roster scrimmaging started. Based on her general physique as you can see in the picture up top, she doesn’t strike me as someone who’s going to have a lot of success on the inside, but Marquette is listing her as a forward for whatever that’s worth. Starting Blue Team’s section of the scrimmage on the bench would put her behind Skylar Forbes and Jada Bediako in terms of frontcourt players, as well as possibly behind Lee Volker in the rotation given the rest of the set of players there. In fairness to Akot, that would also mean she’s behind three of the five projected starters at this point as well as behind Porter as well since she was on the Blue Team too. That’s not that big of a deal, but we’ll have to wait to see what that means in terms of Akot’s placement in the rotation when we get to opening night.