Cara Consuegra has six women returning from last year’s roster, but not much in the way of returning production.
HEY!
Marquette women’s basketball plays their first game of the 2024-25 season THREE WEEKS FROM TOMORROW as you’re first able to read this. So we should probably start diving in and doing some season previewing, huh?
We’re going to talk about the players on the roster returning from Megan Duffy’s final season on the MU sideline here in this article. There’s six of them here, but given that three didn’t play much at all last season and one didn’t play at all, we can stack them all up together here. In the future, we’ll break apart the six newcomers to the roster since Cara Consuegra took over as head coach into two different articles as there’s a bit more to talk about there and it’s good to really explore the space.
But that’s for the future. Let’s get to today’s task. We’ll go in order of minutes played for Marquette in their careers……
Skylar Forbes: 574 minutes
Before you say, “oh, hey, that’s a lot of minutes,” I have to clarify this. Marquette had four women record over 990 minutes of action last season and a fifth get to 780. So it is a lot of minutes as a freshman for Skylar Forbes last season, because 17.8 per game means you’re a notable rotation player…. it just means that Forbes wasn’t a key cog that anyone was depending on night in and night out.
She averaged 4.7 points and 3.9 rebounds per game, and that dipped to 3.9 points and 3.3 rebounds in Big East play as her minutes fell to under 17 a night. It’s important to point out that these are averages, and nowhere was the idea of an average night more poorly defined than for Skylar Forbes a year ago. Here she is playing 26 minutes against Penn….. and then it’s another four games before she breaks 20 again. Here’s 29 against UConn, but just 11 against St. John’s the next time out. Here’s 29 against Villanova, but she didn’t get more than 17 for the next six in a row. Here’s five minutes in a 26 point trampling of Xavier, but then 30 against Villanova in the Big East tournament three games later.
If you have an inconsistent memory of Skylar Forbes’ freshman year, it’s not because you’re losing a step, it’s because sometimes she played a ton and sometimes it’s almost like the previous coaching staff forgot about her.
Cara Consuegra seems to believe that Forbes has a shooting ability that will play a big role for the Golden Eagles this year. If she means shooting overall, I’m on board. If it’s long range shooting…… well, we didn’t see it last year and it didn’t stand out to me at the Open Scrimmage, either against her teammates or against the practice players. If Consuegra and her staff can draw it out of her by the time we go live with games that counts, that’s probably pretty good news, as by default, Forbes is the player with the most experience in a Marquette uniform. On top of that, she was one of the five that Consuegra put on the floor to start the section of the open scrimmage against the practice players. It’s her chance to stand in the spotlight, and it’s up to the coaches to decide whether or not that’s working.
Lee Volker: 477 minutes
I thought that Lee Volker did well with the role that she was assigned last season. With Jordan King, Rose Nkumu, and Kenzie Hare occupying the starting backcourt/wing spots, all Volker had to do is fill in around them. She averaged 14.9 minutes per game filling in around the starters, and as you’d expect, she wasn’t asked to do a lot. That’s how you end up at 3.5 points, 2.6 rebounds, and a bit over an assist per game. She also shot 50% on two-point attempts, and you can’t ask more from a sub than hit half your shots.
Volker appears to be inline for a starting spot on this year’s team after she was one of the five to start things off against the practice players at the Open Scrimmage. We’ll see how long that lasts. I got the early impression that Volker was the best player on the floor in the early going, but that also might be the default vision of “I see Lee Volker doing things I remember Lee Volker doing last year” combined with an unfamiliarity with literally half of the women on the roster. I don’t know how Consuegra wants to play, but we all have to admit that her 16% long range shooting on 19 attempts last year….. after going 3-for-30 as a freshman at Duke…. isn’t particularly great news for someone who’s going to be asked to play 20, 25, 30 minutes a night.
Here’s my big question for Volker this season: How close did she come to leaving Marquette? She was in the transfer portal, and then 22 days later, she was back out and staying in Milwaukee. What was it about Marquette or Cara Consuegra that convinced her to be one of the rare players to withdraw from the portal and stay where they were?
Abbey Cracknell: 160 minutes
It’s a little unfair to judge Abbey Cracknell on what we saw from her last season, as she was officially announced as part of the roster in early August. She missed the entirety of the offseason training program, and then when things went live, she averaged 7.6 minutes per game in 21 appearances. I think it’s a fair question to ask of the previous coaching staff what exactly was the plan here, given that Cracknell was coming up from the junior college ranks and was only going to have two years in a blue and gold uniform no matter what. Maybe there’s a good answer along the lines of “we didn’t know if Claire Kaifes could give us anything” and given that Kaifes didn’t play double digit minutes in consecutive games until January, that’s a solid point. There’s also the issue of Charia Smith suddenly sporting a knee brace over last summer that might help explain the late Cracknell addition, even if it didn’t turn into minutes in games that counted.
In any case, the 5’11” Aussie is still a bit of a mystery to Marquette fans, especially since she didn’t play more than eight minutes in any game after January 3rd. A minute here and a minute there is barely enough time to register that she’s on the floor much less contributing. If Consuegra and her staff can get Cracknell back towards the 11/6/2 and more than a steal per game that she averaged as a sophomore at Gulf Coast State College, then I think that’s a big win for the Golden Eagles. For the moment, based on the open scrimmage, it looks like Cracknell’s role will be coming off the bench for Marquette, but as you can tell from how fast we fell out of “averaged double digit minutes a game last season,” there’s a pretty wide open chance for people to earn playing time.
Bridget Utberg: 95 minutes
I would love to get Bridget Utberg’s honest opinion about her transition from starting and playing 35 minutes a night for Central Michigan as a freshman to playing 95 total minutes spread across 15 games for Marquette as a sophomore. Good news: Marquette was a lot better than the 6-23 Chippewas. Bad news: Lots of waving a towel on the bench during games. Was it just the coaching change that caused her transfer? How does she feel about sticking around Milwaukee through another coaching change? Did she just not want to move all of her stuff another time?
I’m curious to see if Utberg’s shooting touch returns this season. She connected on nearly 35% of her long range attempts at CMU, and she took a whole bunch of them at 6.3 per game. Her limited minutes last season capped her at just 11 attempts in 2023-24, and she only hit two of them. I’m willing to chalk that up to a lack of flow relative to playing time, and if she’s getting a rhythm going, maybe she can turn into an effective bench scoring option for Marquette.
Charia Smith: 76 minutes
DISCLAIMER: All of Charia Smith’s 76 minutes of basketball in a Marquette uniform came in the 2022-23 season. She played more than seven minutes just twice in that entire season, and we haven’t seen her play in a competitive contest since she got 30 seconds of burn in a 52-51 road win over Providence on February 15, 2023. Smith missed all of last season with a knee injury that cropped up over the summer, and while that put a pause button on her development as a player at the time, it’s also going to be at least 15 months since that injury by the time that Marquette plays a real game that counts again.
I mean this as a compliment: Every time we saw Charia Smith as a freshman, she looked like a freshman figuring things out at the high major Division 1 level. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just what happens sometimes, especially with a team that has Chloe Marotta and Liza Karlen vacuuming up minutes in the front court.
I mean this as critical analysis with a caveat: I didn’t see anything from Smith at the Open Scrimmage that immediately told me that she’s made huge strides as a player and is ready to make a contribution as a redshirt sophomore this season. The caveat there is I didn’t see it immediately and all that means is that Smith didn’t stand out in any way to me at the open scrimmage. Half of it was the two halves of the team playing against each other, so there was a lot going on to be clear. Every time I tried to focus on Smith — which was spotty at best, there were six completely unfamiliar players to try to pay attention to as well — all I saw was someone playing in a basketball game. To a certain extent, that’s a positive, as even with a knee brace on, she didn’t stand out on the negative side of things either.
Halle Vice: 62 minutes
Given the overall composition of the roster, I don’t think anyone particularly expected a lot from Halle Vice as a freshman last season. Then she suffered a hand/wrist injury in preseason activities, and that’s kind of a real bummer in terms of getting up to speed with your teammates when you’re a freshman. As a result, Vice didn’t play at all until Marquette’s seventh game of the season, and that was one of just 12 appearances all season for her.
Under normal circumstances, sophomore year would be a time for a big step forward for Vice. The coaching change at Marquette throws a big ol’ wrench into that situation, as we don’t know where Megan Duffy and Cara Consuegra differ on how Vice fits each coach’s style of play. It’s probably great news that Vice came to Marquette after breaking her high school’s career and single season scoring records….. but that’s something that a lot of Division 1 players do, I’d be willing to guess.
Nothing is guaranteed in Consuegra’s first season in terms of playing rotation. Vice is still something of a mystery to Marquette fans, so there’s still a certain amount of tremendous upside to what she can turn into as a player. Does she have something in her that this roster needs? Is that enough to turn into a rotation player this season? Can she make things happen on both ends of the court and fight her way into more playing time?
Are these questions that apply to everyone on this list other than Forbes and Volker? You bet they are.