The Golden Eagles are the 11th and final Big East team to play a conference game this season, and they start their run of 18 on the road against the Blue Demons.
I don’t think anyone’s going to argue with me if I say that we’d all feel better about Marquette women’s basketball if they were going into Big East play with a nine game winning streak.
I mean, sure, obviously, duh, who doesn’t like nine game winning streaks? But if Marquette had managed to pull off a win on their visit to Bowling Green instead of returning to Milwaukee with a 64-62 loss, if one of a dozen things had gone differently in that game up to and including Olivia Porter’s turnover in the closing seconds, Marquette would have nine straight wins right now, including a road win over a Falcons squad that would at least approximate something like the situations that MU is going to face on the road repeatedly in Big East play.
But they didn’t, so they don’t, and so we remain holding questions about where the next 18 games are going. It’s clear that Cara Consuegra is doing a tremendous job getting her 12 scholarship players to jell together and continue to become a better and better basketball team as the season is rolling along. Barring a tremendous upward trend, this still isn’t going to turn into an NCAA tournament team by the time we get to March. It’s probably going to be a rocky pathway through Big East play, and it’s probably going to look like that right out of the gate with UConn at home and a visit to Creighton in the first four games.
But is there still enough optimism to believe that Marquette can go 9-9? I think that’s a reasonable goal to shoot at right now, and you know what? .500 in league play would definitely shoot right past that 10th place preseason projection. That would be just fine by me.
By the way: If you haven’t already, run on over and check out our Big East conference play preview. It’s got a rundown of where exactly every single women’s basketball team sits right now, and gives you a nice look generalized look at exactly how Marquette might be able to try to find those nine wins this season.
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 #1: at DePaul Blue Demons (6-8, 1-0 Big East)
Date: Sunday, December 29, 2024
Time: 2pm Central
Location: Wintrust Arena, Chicago, Illinois
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Marquette is 37-49 all time against DePaul. The Blue Demons have controlled the series 23-19 since the two teams have joined the Big East, but the Golden Eagles have won seven of the last eight and each of the last five in a row.
At a glance, it appears that things are not going well for DePaul for the third straight season and the fourth time in the last five years. The Blue Demons are under .500 through 14 games, they are #119 in the NCAA’s NET rankings, #101 at BartTorvik.com, and #141 at Her Hoop Stats. It’s not an ideal situation for DePaul, as they drift further and further from that long streak of NCAA tournament appearances.
But if you dig deeper, DePaul’s “problems” this year largely stem from some combination of 1) not being a particularly great basketball team and 2) scheduling like they are a particularly great basketball team. I don’t know if there’s a policy in Lincoln Park to continue apace like DePaul was the toast of the Big East like they were during the first years of The Reformation, but they definitely scheduled like they thought they were this season.
DePaul has losses to:
- #5 Texas
- #9 Oklahoma
- #12 Kansas State
- #19 Michigan State
Did they have to agree to play these games? No, absolutely not, and each and everyone of them resulted in a final margin of at least 23 points. Just got run straight off the floor by four of the better teams in the country, teams that they had to have known, based on the last two seasons, that they had no chance of being competitive against for a full 40 minutes. One, maybe two of them? Okay. All four, plus road trips to Northwestern and Green Bay, and home games against Princeton and UNLV, both of which turned into 19 point losses? All problems of their own design.
But through all of that, DePaul still opened up Big East play 1-0 with a 23 point win over Butler in a game that they were not favored to win. Maybe they got a little bit lucky, shooting 6-for-15 (40%) from behind the three-point line in a season where they’re still only shooting 29.9% overall. That still makes DePaul a dangerous team for a Marquette squad that’s not exactly a finished product on the court at the moment, no matter what the Blue Demons’ record says.
Marquette’s defensive efforts will be focused on Jorie Allen and Taylor Johnson-Matthews. Allen is the leading scorer at 18.8 points per game, and she leads the team in assists with four per outing as well. Allen’s not likely to shoot a three at all, averaging less than one every other game, and she’s not likely to make whatever ones she does take. She’s also #2 on the squad in rebounding, so an overall presence on her while she’s on the floor — she averages 3.4 offensive rebounds per game — is going to be critical. Johnson-Matthews is making an impact in the Big East after going from Wright State to Pearl River in the JUCO ranks. The 5’9” guard is averaging 13.3 points and is DePaul’s most likely three-point shooter in the regular rotation at 4.5 attempts per game. That doesn’t make her good at that, with a 31.7% conversion rate, but she is going to shoot them.
6’2” redshirt junior Meg Newman leads DePaul in rebounding at 7.7 per game after stops at Alabama and Arizona State. The Indianapolis native is one of the 20 best defensive rebounders in terms of rate according to Her Hoop Stats, and that makes Newman one of the bright spots in a DePaul rotation that doesn’t rebound the ball very well all together. HHS has the Blue Demons as a sub-100 rebounding team on both ends of the floor, so if Marquette can body up Newman, that’s going to go a long way towards limiting what they can accomplish on the glass.
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