The Golden Eagles head out east with an eye on a season sweep of the Wildcats.
And now, the back half of the Big East slate for Marquette women’s basketball.
The way the schedule worked out — on purpose? who can say — Marquette got to the nine game mark of the slate without repeating a Big East opponent yet. Sunday’s game will be their first repeat opponent, and then with one exception — MU only plays Creighton and St. John’s once this season — it’ll be nothing but repeat opponents for the rest of the season.
It’s an interesting proposition for the Golden Eagles, who go into the second nine games of the schedule with a 6-3 record. All three of their losses are to the only three teams in front of Marquette in the standings as of Friday night. Nothing wrong with any of that, of course. In theory, it sets MU up nicely for a pretty solid record coming back around on each team. That’s in theory though, because for as much success that MU has had in the past nine games, they haven’t been the world’s most consistent basketball team.
All the reasons in the world to be optimistic about how the next nine games will go, but Marquette has to keep getting better each and every time out, too. Eight of their opponents in the next nine games have seen the Golden Eagles in action already this season, and “actual contact with the enemy” is a pretty good starting point on a plan of action for the next encounter.
Of course, we also have to note the other thing: Marquette’s magic number on finishing better than their 10th place projection from the preseason coaches poll? Five. Any combination of five Marquette wins and losses by at least one of the three teams with eight losses right now means Cara Consuegra is coming out better than expectations this season.
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Big East Game #10: at Villanova Wildcats (11-10, 5-4 Big East)
Date: Sunday, February 2, 2025
Time: 1pm Central
Location: Finneran Pavilion, Villanova, Pennsylvania
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Marquette is 19-16 all time against Villanova. The Wildcats had won six straight encounters with the Golden Eagles over the past three seasons, but MU snapped that run with a 50-48 Big East tournament quarterfinal victory last season and the win in Milwaukee earlier this year made it two straight for MU.
I don’t think we can quite say that Villanova has been on a heater since their loss in Milwaukee. Yes, they’ve won three of their four games since then, but the fact of the matter is that two of the three aren’t particularly notable accomplishments based on the Big East standings. 66-55 at home over a DePaul team is a quality win, especially after handing back all of a double digit lead and more in the third quarter, or at least a win over a team that’s shaping up to be top half of the conference. However, the other two W’s were barely squeaking past now 2-8 in the league St. John’s on the road and then toppling Xavier by 15 at home in their most recent game. The Wildcats had to rally from trailing by eight late in the first half in that St. John’s victory, and that was after they jumped out to an eight point lead pretty quickly. The Xavier margin isn’t particularly impressive after MU just beat the Musketeers by 29 on the road, and VU was down nine in the first quarter, too.
The loss in the middle of that 3-1 run? Lost at UConn by 43. File that under “whatever,” and hope MU doesn’t do worse than that when the regular season finale rolls around.
It’s hard to say for certain what we can take away from Marquette’s win in the first meeting between these two teams because the Golden Eagles were without Skylar Forbes while the Wildcats were without Jasmine Bascoe. That’s both squads going without their leading scorers for 40 minutes, so have fun figuring out how the two teams match up with both women back in the lineup as they have been for the last few games.
With that said, the first game felt like Villanova figured themselves out before Marquette figured themselves out. The Wildcats were up 13 late in the first half before the Golden Eagles smashed them coming out of the locker room, 21-9 in the third quarter. If that means that Marquette has an edge because they have a solve for 95% of what Villanova is doing, then that’s great news.
However, Jasmine Bascoe is taking up a lot of the oxygen in the room for Villanova. She leads the team in field goal attempts, although her two missed games did allow Maddie Webber to close the game on that lead. Both women average more than 12 shots per game, and in Milwaukee, Marquette made things hard for Webber. She shot 3-for-6 behind the arc but just 3-for-11 inside of it. 11 shots is the same number of shots that Maddie Burke had overall as the next most frequent shooter in the first meeting, so it will be interesting to see how things reorient themselves with Bascoe back on the floor.
When it comes to shooting, solving what Villanova’s doing behind the arc will be key. They’re top 40 in the country in three-point shooting percentage this season, and their 6-for-17 in the first game is about on pace for them. However, Webber and Burke were 5-for-12 by themselves, and while that’s good, Marquette has to be happy about the rest of the team going 1-for-5. This is where defending Jasmine Bascoe plays a part in what happens. Bascoe is averaging four long range attempts per game this season, but she’s hitting less than 32% of them. Holding her to 1-for-4 or 2-for-6 is a win for Marquette, but not at the expense of leaving shooters like Burke or Bronagh Power-Cassidy open to hit at a better than 40% clip.