The Golden Eagles take their fourth crack at winning back-to-back Big East games for the first time with Cara Consuegra on the sideline.
For the fourth time this season, Marquette women’s basketball is precisely one game over .500 in Big East play.
It’s been win one, lose one for the first seven games of Cara Consuegra’s first tour through conference play as the head coach of the Golden Eagles. That’s not a criticism in the slightest, part of that back-and-forth is just the schedule popping up UConn and Creighton, the top two teams in the league, at just the right time. MU was picked to finish 10th in the Big East this season, so the fact that Saturday afternoon’s contest has them poised to win a fifth game in league play is great news. MU’s obviously a long way from clinching anything in the standings, but through seven games, Consuegra has her squad in position to make more noise than expected.
But they have to dedicate themselves to making that noise each and every time out. MU might be better than expected this season — they’re gone from #102 in the BartTorvik.com rankings before their opener to #69 on Thursday afternoon as I write this — but they’re still not what you would call a reliable team. Even their defense, the end of the floor that was their calling card out of the gate this year, has gotten a teeny tiny bit shaky lately. Then again, that’s shaky relative to how they were locking teams up. When your rolling 5 game average by Torvik’s math is still at 83.4 points per 100 possession, even when adjusted for opponent strength, you’re doing just fine. It’s just currently on a downward turn, which isn’t ideal.
Like I said: Re-dedication each and every time out. There aren’t really teams on the schedule that we can firmly count on Marquette being able to blow them out, no matter where the game is played. Do the work, play to the scouting report, make the easy plays, etc., etc., whatever other cliche you want to throw out. One game at a time. Win this one, and MU’s two games over .500 in league play for the first time all season. We’ll worry about three games over after Saturday afternoon.
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Big East Game #8: vs Georgetown Hoyas (10-9, 3-5 Big East)
Date: Saturday, January 25, 2025
Time: 2pm Central
Location: Al McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 27-4 all time against Georgetown. The Golden Eagles have won 13 straight in the series and 16 of the last 17, including the only meeting in Milwaukee last year. MU’s most recent loss in the series was at Georgetown in January 2018.
The thing I was worried about for Georgetown this season seems to have come to pass. Last year was an incredibly emotional season for the Hoyas as new head coach Tasha Butts lost her battle with cancer before the season even started. But the Hoyas pulled together, went 9-9 in Big East play to finish 23-12 on the year, and even made a couple of upsets in the Big East tournament to get to the championship game. My big question for them in the offseason was whether or not Darnell Haney would be able to maintain that momentum after getting the interim tag removed from his title as head coach.
We already know that the Hoyas couldn’t match last year’s 12-2 start to the season, which included a 9-1 mark in non-conference action. That went out the door when they went 0-2 in their trip to Canada for their multi-team event, and that dropped Georgetown to 2-3 on the year. Up until about 10 days ago, they were 1-5 in Big East play with the only victory coming at home over a very clearly worse than them Xavier squad.
Georgetown does come into Saturday with back-to-back victories though. They beat Providence in Rhode Island, same as Marquette did earlier this week. Then, on Wednesday night, they had to escape a furious St. John’s rally to win. With precisely five minutes to play, Kelsey Ransom got a layup to put Georgetown up 14. Not as great as their 18 point lead in the third quarter, but y’know, pretty safe…… but not completely safe.
They gave up a 14-0 run. In less than three minutes. Georgetown needed two buckets from Ransom in the final 33 seconds, including one with two seconds to play, in order to be able to hold on to win after St. John’s missed a shot at the horn that would have sent it to overtime. Lucky or good, I’ll let you decide.
Ransom is the Hoyas’ top scorer, getting them 19.1 points per game. Victoria Rivera adds 12.9, and Ariel Jenkins averages 12.5 per game. I point this out because Her Hoop Stats has Georgetown at #354 in the country in possessions per 40 minutes. That’s a lot of points for one of the slowest teams in the country. Yes, I know, no one else on the team averages more than 7.1 per game. You see my point.
Ransom and Rivera are going to do the majority of the shooting for the Hoyas, so it’s up to Marquette to make that as miserable for them as they made things for Grace Efosa on Wednesday. If MU prompts both of them into matching Efosa’s 2-for-14 shooting, then I suspect that the Golden Eagles will win fairly comfortably. Rivera’s the tricky one amongst the two, as most of her 11.1 attempts per game come from behind the three-point line. She’s hitting on nearly 42% of her long range shots this season, so MU has to make sure she doesn’t get clean looks for 40 straight minutes.
Marquette may have an advantage on the glass in this game. Georgetown’s no great shakes on the boards on either end, but the Hoyas are particularly susceptible to giving up an offensive rebound more than you’d like to see if you’re wearing Georgetown Gray. Marquette isn’t elite in that department, but they are top 100 in the country according to BartTorvik.com, so if they can get a couple extra cracks at the basket as the game goes along, that’s probably going to help.
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