The Golden Eagles head out east with an eye on avoiding a RAC Attack not once, but twice
Well, it’s time for me to reap what I have sown.
Years ago, I noticed that Marquette men’s basketball always struggled when they visited Rutgers, but they shelled the Knights easily when the series moved to Milwaukee. This, combined with the name of Rutgers’ basketball arena at the time and knowledge of Nikki Bella’s finishing maneuver, led me to refer to Things That Would Happen To You when visiting Rutgers as a RAC Attack. This started becoming particularly useful as Steve Pikiell took over the men’s basketball team in 2016 and started sneaking up on teams at the RAC, now called Jersey Mike’s Arena.
And now, more than 11 years later, it is time for Marquette Golden Eagles women’s basketball to break the seal and return a Marquette team to the RAC. Hopefully, I have not cursed Marquette to a loss to the Scarlet Knights on this visit just by way of the universe teaching me a lesson.
The good news is that Marquette’s offense has looked much more on top of things over the past two games. Yes, they were both against teams that were on paper going to lose those games to the Golden Eagles anyway. But MU still needed to actually do the good things on offense that we didn’t quite see against UCF or Illinois to come away with the hilariously lopsided wins over D2 Illinois Springfield and IU Indy. It would be foolish to think that everything is going to be perfect forever, but the improvement is what’s important here, especially with head coach Cara Consuegra starting from a point where essentially no one on her roster had experience playing with anyone else on the floor.
On paper, it looks like Marquette will get one game against a comparable opponent in New Jersey this weekend, and one game against an overmatched opponent. A split should be the worst case scenario, and to be honest, a split going the wrong way would actually be a bad result for the Golden Eagles to a certain extent. If they come home from the east coast with two wins….. well, then we can start talking about what the future might hold for Marquette this season.
Game #5: at Rutgers Scarlet Knights (4-2)
Date: Friday, November 29, 2024
Time: 1pm Central
Location: Jersey Mike’s Arena (The RAC), Piscataway, New Jersey
Television: Big Ten Network
Streaming: FoxSports.com/live or the Fox Sports app
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 0-11 all time against Rutgers. Part of that is because MU joined the Big East in the middle of Rutgers going to 10 straight NCAA tournaments, including a Final Four, an Elite Eight, and two Sweet 16s. They also had the bad luck to catch the Knights in the Big East tournament three times in that stretch. The most recent meeting was a 72-54 Rutgers victory in 2013.
Rutgers started off the season just fine, popping off four straight wins, all at home. Leaving the comfort of the RAC has led to The Bad Times, as they lost 91-80 at Virginia Tech in Game #5 of the year, and that cascaded into a 66-49 home loss to Princeton on Sunday. Was Rutgers supposed to be good this season? It’s hard to say, as the Big Ten’s preseason poll only told us the teams picked 1 through 5, so “not in the top five” doesn’t tell us much in an 18 team league. But, we can say for certain, that VaTech and Princeton were the first two times that the Scarlet Knights challenged themselves. BartTorvik.com has those two in the top 70 right now, and Rutgers’ first four opponents are all sub-190.
If Marquette wants to win this game, they’re going to have to find a way to slow down Destiny Adams and Kiymoi McMiller…. and maybe Chyna Cornwell, too. Adams and McMiller are averaging 21.7 and 17 points per game respectively, and Adams is hitting for a double-double with 12.0 rebounds a night, too. Cornwell is almost at a double-double with 9.5 points and 10.3 rebounds. Adams and Cornwell are experienced players in their fourth and fifth years of eligibility respectively, while McMiller was ESPN’s #27 prospect in the Class of 2024.
Adams and Cornwell are, unsurprisingly, getting most of their work done inside. Both women are listed at 6’3”, and Adams has taken all 12 of the three-pointers that the pair have accounted for this season. McMiller is a bit more of an inside/outside threat, as the 5’8” guard has taken nearly 28% of her attempts from long range. As a whole, Rutgers isn’t trying to shoot threes, which makes sense because they’re not that great at it, with just 25.5% of their attempts going down this season.
They’re also cleaning up on the offensive glass to help boost the efficiency. Cornwell and Adams are both top 100 in offensive rebounding rate at this point of the year, with Cornwell currently ranked at #23 by Her Hoop Stats. Rutgers is #30 as a team there, and they don’t make mistakes for themselves either with a turnover rate under 17%. This will be a strong test of what appears to be a very tough Marquette defense.
Game #6: vs Maryland Eastern Shore Hawks (4-3)
Date: Saturday, November 30, 2024
Time: 3:30pm Central
Location: Jersey Mike’s Arena (The RAC), Piscataway, New Jersey
Television: B1G+
Streaming: FoxSports.com/live or the Fox Sports app
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
This is the first ever meeting between Marquette and Maryland Eastern Shore.
A Tuesday afternoon loss to Illinois in Nashville dropped UMES down to 4-3 on the season. However, we should point out that they have three wins against teams outside of Division 1. So, yes, that makes them 1-3 against D1 competition this season….. and also makes us ask serious questions about what’s going on with Dayton. The Flyers ended up taking a 62-56 loss to the Hawks as part of that event in Nashville, and given that Maryland Eastern Shore committed 24 turnovers in the game and still went a run late to pull away and win…. well, that’s probably bad news for Dayton’s season.
But we’re here for UMES business. Their business primarily goes through Zamara Haynes, who is the only starter averaging more than eight points a game. The 5’7” guard averages 17.3 points per game overall this season, but that’s up to 22.0 a night against Division 1 opponents. 6’0” center Mahogany Lester is pulling in 7.4 rebounds per game and is tied with Haynes for the team lead in assists at just 1.6 helpers per contest.
From here on out, I’m only going to be talking about Maryland Eastern Shore in context of their games against Division 1 opponents, because Her Hoop Stats and BartTorvik.com only look at those contests when generating tempo-free analytics. The fact of the matter is that Marquette’s defense — currently #45 in the country per Torvik — should eat UMES’ offense alive. The Hawks are #322 in effective field goal percentage and #320 in turnover rate on offense through four games against D1 opponents, and while MU isn’t really doing much in the way of forcing turnovers, they’re certainly not going to turn them down, either. If I am right in the analysis that Cara Consuegra is coaching a relentless and tough defensive approach to the season, then MU should be able to close down UMES pretty easily.
Whether the MU offense is enough on track to hold up on the other end, that’s up for debate. Maryland Eastern Shore isn’t an elite defensive team, but they’re not absurdly awful, either. Their one big flaw on defense is that they put teams on the free throw line way, way too much, and that’s not a thing that Marquette’s great at taking advantage of to this point of the year. This may be a place where Olivia Porter excels, as she has 26 field goal attempts this season…. and 20 free throw attempts. If MU can get her going downhill into the UMES defense, that might start opening things up across the board.