We get BIRD ON BIRD VIOLENCE in a return bout from a Golden Eagles’ road trip last season.
I like charts. Can I show you a Marquette women’s basketball chart?
That’s from BartTorvik.com, and as you can see from the menu at the top, it’s Marquette’s Game Scores for this season. Well, most of the season, it skips the Illinois Springfield game since the Prairie Hawks aren’t a Division 1 squad. Put simply, it’s a measurement of how well and/or efficiently you played in any particular game, with a bit of added bonus weight for the difficulty of the opponent. It’s easier to get a better score with a decent game against a top 5 opponent than it is by blowing out a bottom 5 opponent, you get the idea.
The point is this: Line Goes Up.
Yes, Marquette started out the year with a not so hot performance against UCF. But the Line Goes Up. Cara Consuegra and her collection of 12 women who had essentially never played with each other before preseason practices started are figuring out how all of their talents meld together into a cohesive basketball unit. They’re getting better, and even though their list of opponents right now might not be as good as playing an Illinois team that was on the verge of going into the top 25 — currently #21 in the AP poll! — the rough edges are getting smoothed out and Marquette is getting better every time they play.
Who knows what that’s going to turn into come Big East play, that’s for down the road. Right now, all that matters is making that trend line, both the thick yellow season average and the dotted black rolling five game average, go up.
Game #8: vs Illinois State Redbirds (5-3)
Date: Sunday, December 8, 2024
Time: 2pm Central
Location: Al McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: FloSports with Bob Brainerd and Chloe Marotta on the call
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 3-2 all time against Illinois State after coming away from Normal with a skin-of-their-teeth come-from-behind 64-62 victory a year ago.
Illinois State’s season has kind of been all over the place to this point of the year. Start off with a road win over Northwestern, lose at Saint Louis to a Billikens team that’s probably not as good as ISU or Northwestern. Beat Le Moyne at home, lose by 10 at home to a very good Harvard team. Literally traverse the map to Florida to lose to a pretty decent Boise State team in the first game of the Gulf Coast Showcase, and then run both High Point and New Mexico State out of the gym in their other two games in that event. I don’t know if there’s anything to take away from their 110-60 win over NAIA St. Francis on Thursday, other than I bet the local school kids had fun watching that.
All of this comes after ISU was picked to finish seventh in the Missouri Valley Conference this season, which is a little surprising after they went 13-7 in the league a year ago and they’ve won at least 11 games in each of the last four seasons. That might have to do with turnover on the roster, and we can’t help but remember that ISU head coach Kristen Gillespie’s name came up when Marquette’s coaching search was going on back in April. In a slightly different universe, Gillespie is on the northern bench in this game at the Al instead of the southern one.
Illinois State has a four-pack of women averaging at least 11 points a game this season, and effectively, not a single one of them played against MU down in Normal last season. I say “effectively” because the only one of the four that played is leading scorer Shannon Dowell (15.1 ppg), and she saw just three minutes of action. The other three are all transfers, as you would expect given that past information. Elyce Knudsen is a grad transfer from D3 Milliken, fresh off setting the school record for points in a season, and she’s going for 14.3 points per game after missing the first two games of the year. Nevaeh Thomas (13.9 ppg) is probably going to have a notable cheering section at the Al as the Kenosha native has transferred over from Evansville. Finally, Addison Martin is a redshirt junior who started nearly every game for Abilene Christian over the past two years. She’s adding 11.0 points per game, and in total, having four scorers at that level is going to create an interesting mix for Marquette’s defense to shut them down.
Corralling Knudsen’s three-point shooting is probably the most important thing on the scouting report. She’s splashing nearly 54% of her attempts this season, and she only went 1-for-2 last time out against the NAIA squad, which technically brought her average down. Her numbers are being boosted by going 8-for-16 in her first two games, but it’s not like 6-for-10 since then is bad, it’s just a much slower rate of attempting shots.
That slower rate is more in line with what Gillespie is preaching for her team, as Her Hoop Stats has them at #285 in the country in three-point attempt rate right now. That’s probably not a great way for them to play, as Knudsen’s helping propel them to being the #29 most accurate long range shooting team in the country, at least in games against Division 1 competition. Then again, they’re also #26 in two-point shooting percentage, so hey, if you can get layups a lot, do it, who am I to argue?
As you can tell, Illinois State’s offense is pretty great. They’re a little touch and go on turnovers, but they get to the line a ton as well to make up for that. Their defense is a little suspect, as BartTorvik.com has them at #273 in effective field goal percentage and #278 in takeaway rate. It certainly seems like MU’s offense won’t be under a great deal of pressure here, so perhaps that’s a good sign for them to have a smooth day on their slightly lesser side of the ball.