The Golden Eagles have to travel and deal with an arena full of Rhode Island schoolkids in the middle of the day.
Last week Wednesday saw Marquette women’s basketball take their first questionable loss of Big East play. Not questionable in terms of how it played out, merely in terms of who the opponent was. You lose to UConn and Creighton, you chalk it up to the cost of doing business. Seton Hall’s not that far off that point as they seem to have established themselves as the #3 team in the Big East….. but BartTorvik.com thought that the matchup at the McGuire Center favored the Golden Eagles ever so slightly. It was a game that Marquette could win and a game that they were favored to win….. but they couldn’t bring it home after falling behind by 16 early in the third quarter.
And now Marquette’s had a week to stew in the fact that they let that game get away from them because of that big deficit. Heck, Marquette was flying around with such ferociousness to cut that margin all the way down to just three points, it makes you wonder— other than the obvious “look, it’s real tiring, man” answer — why head coach Cara Consuegra doesn’t preach more of a run around like crazy people style for her team. When they get pushed up against the wall, Marquette has responded with wild closing flurries over and over again this season.
And yet the Golden Eagles are in the back half of pace of play this year according to BartTorvik.com. Isn’t there a certain amount of logic to “hey, what if we bring that intensity to the game early instead of when it’s maybe too late to make a difference?” Then again, given that Marquette isn’t so hot at taking care of the basketball this season — 23% rate, #168 on Torvik! — maybe playing with that pace would just lead to more turnovers…. Or maybe it would lead to less turnovers since it would be forcing other teams to try to catch up instead of buckling up and tightening down on the MU ball handlers.
In any case, Wednesday morning is a chance to restart for Marquette. They’re 3-3 in Big East play so far, alternating wins and losses through six games. MU can be a top half of the league team this year, but they’ve got to start putting wins next to each other. Step #1 in that regard: Going out and getting a win in a place that’s caused Marquette problems in the past two seasons. Two years ago, it was MU nearly blowing a 20 point lead, and last year, the Golden Eagles had to rally out of a very early 18 point deficit. Can we get a nice calm hey look, Marquette won by nine, nothing weird happen victory here?
Big East Game #7: at Providence Friars (9-12, 2-6 Big East)
Date: Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Time: 10am Central
Location: Alumni Hall, Providence, Rhode Island
Streaming: FloSports, with Mike Mancuso & Pam Roecker calling the action
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 25-6 all time against Providence. After stealing a win in the wake of trailing 20-2 at Alumni Hall last season, the Golden Eagles have now won 14 straight games against the Friars.
Hey, remember when the Big East coaches voted Providence to be the #3 team in the league 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. Picking them #3, behind only UConn and Creighton seemed pretty wild to me, but I’m not a highly paid basketball professional.
Unfortunately for the highly paid basketball professionals, I’m coming out on the right side of history on this one, as Providence comes into Wednesday morning with losses in four of their last five and the win was a “first to 50” scraper of a win over a very not good at all Xavier team. Heck, that XU victory would have broke up a massive losing streak for the Friars if they hadn’t picked up what was at the time a slightly shocking overtime win over St. John’s. It’s less shocking now because the Red Storm are 1-6 in the Big East with only a win over Xavier, but that’s a conversation for the future here. The point is: Providence has been in for a struggle this season ever since they lost in overtime at home to Columbia in their first Division 1 game of the season.
I’ll give the Friars this: They don’t have any truly rotten losses. VCU and Wisconsin aren’t world beaters this season or anything, but those aren’t truly outrageous losses….. they’re just run of the mill results for a PC team that’s #149 in the country in the ol’ BartTorvik.com rankings.
Providence is one of the slowest paced teams in the country this season, so take that into account when I say that Grace Efosa is the only scoring threat that Marquette has to worry in this game. At 14.6 per game, she’s the only player on the roster averaging more than nine points per game, and the 5’11” guard is the only player who averages more than nine shots per game attempts per game as well. If MU can either A) divert the offense to someone else or B) speed the game up to the point where someone else has taken 10 field goal attempts in the game, that’s probably a long term good sign for the Golden Eagles.
While defending Efosa, Marquette does have to be careful about who they’re leaving open. Three of the four women attempting at least two three-pointers per game — including Efosa, mind you — are shooting below 27%. Quite honestly: I’m fine if Marquette lets any of these three shoot a long range attempt until they make one at all. That courtesy does not extend to Marta Morales, who is connecting on over 40% of her more than three attempts per game. She’s moved into the starting lineup for the last several games, and against Big East opponents this season, Morales is hitting over 43% of her triples. Whatever else happens in this game on MU’s defensive end of the floor, Morales can not be left alone to let it fly. She’s the only threat that the Friars have in that regard.
It looks like Marquette’s going to have an advantage on the glass on both ends in this game. The Golden Eagles are a top 100 rebounding rate squad, while Providence comes in somewhere south of #180 on both ends according to Her Hoop Stats. With that said, MU is going to have to body up Olivia Olsen. She’s a top 100 defensive rebounder, and #300 in the country on the offensive glass is no joke, either. Even at PC’s glacially slow pace, Olsen is still just barely short of eight rebounds per game, and so the Golden Eagles can’t let her start busting out the Windex regularly.