The Jaguars come to Milwaukee for a return bout after the Golden Eagles visited them last season.
It’s been SO LONG since we watched Marquette women’s basketball do anything.
It’s been even longer since they matched up with a Division 1 opponent.
Cara Consuegra picked up her first victory as Marquette head coach back on Monday, November 18th. It feels like forever ago that they beat Illinois Springfield, 92-37, at the McGuire Center. The Prairie Stars are a Division 2 outfit though, so we haven’t seen the Golden Eagles tangle with a D1 squad since their 65-53 loss to Illinois back on November 10th.
Yep, that was a while back.
It also means that Consuegra is still hunting for her first win over a Division 1 program. No worries in that regard, everyone else on the schedule this year is a D1 team, starting with IU Indy on Sunday afternoon. In fact, Marquette is favored by the BartTorvik.com algorithm in seven of their next eight games, and that could easily turn into nine of the next nine if the Golden Eagles turn in a very good performance against the Jaguars.
And that’s the big question facing Marquette right now. How much did running over Illinois Springfield help get the Marquette offense on track? That was clearly the end of the floor that was struggling in the first two games of the season. If we use the ol’ Torvik filtering system, Marquette’s offense is ranked #302 in the country against Division 1 opponents. They looked off-kilter and shaky against UCF and Illinois, no doubt about it. Things looked much smoother against UIS, but again: Division 2 opponent. If they didn’t look better, there would have been major problems to discuss. Did getting things flowing in a good direction against the Prairie Stars help Marquette overall going forward?
Quite honestly, all Marquette has to do is look functional and reasonable on offense. Going back to the Torvik filter, MU’s defense is #31 in the country. Yes, playing two top 100 opponents helps there, but it was clear that UCF and Illinois were having zero fun going against the Golden Eagles’ defense. Defense is easier to get started on the right foot, there’s a little less continuity and rhythm that you have to develop on that end when you have a roster that’s essentially never played with each other. You can paper over a lot of tiny holes with just pure effort by all five players on the court.
Offense takes more time to gel together. If MU’s offense has done some gelling in the last two weeks, then Consuegra’s first season is looking up. We get our first chance of seeing it against a Division 1 squad again on Sunday, so let’s cross our fingers and hope we see continued improvement…….
REMINDER: Marquette’s home contests are streamed nearly exclusively on FloSports, and the same goes for almost all Big East home games and almost all league schedule contests. If you are paying full price for FloSports at $30 a month, you are doing it wrong. Please use this link to pay $20 via the new FloCollege offering.
Game #4: vs IU Indy Jaguars (1-4)
Date: Sunday, November 24, 2024
Time: Noon Central
Location: Al McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 2-1 all time against IU Indy with all three games coming back when they were called IUPUI. The most recent one was last year when Megan Duffy took her squad on the road to Indianapolis and came back with a 92-58 victory.
Things started out pretty well this year for IU Indy, especially after they were picked to finish 10th out of 11 teams in the Horizon League after going 7-23 last season. Opening Night of the season had the Jaguars picking up a 101-76 home win over Evansville, which is great no matter how you slice it. However, IU Indy is 0-4 since then, and they’ve only broken 70 points once in those four losses. They are coming off a 72-47 loss at Bradley on Thursday afternoon, but I guess the good news is that margin isn’t their worst of the season? They lost by 26 to Ball State to kick off their losing streak.
On one hand, IU Indy has a dangerous scorer in junior college transfer Shania Nichols-Vannett. She’s averaging 16 points a game on 53% shooting that includes 55% from behind the three-point line. On the other hand, Nichols-Vannett put up 37 on 9-for-12 shooting in the Jaguars’ 85-80 loss to Southern Illinois. That means she’s averaging 10.8 points on 46% shooting in IU Indy’s other four games, which is not quite as great. She’s still shooting 53% from long range across the other four games, although that includes an 0-for-2 last time out against Bradley.
Even if you drop the SIU game, Nichols-Vannett would still be IU Indy’s top scorer. That competition does get a lot closer, as there are two women who have played in all five games falling in between nine and 10 points per game. That’s Nevaeh Foster (9.8) and Faith Stinson (9.6). Katie Davidson is averaging 9.5 points, but the preseason all-Horizon League guard/forward hasn’t gotten onto the floor since leaving the second game of the year after eight minutes of action. Jada Patton is averaging 9.3 points a night after missing the opener.
Nobody on the Jaguars’ roster is knocking them dead in the rebounding department, so it’s more of a by committee situation. That committee is not working particularly very well to this point of the year, as Her Hoop Stats has them as a sub-320 rebounding rate team on both ends of the floor. Even after a 1-for-13 effort as a team against Bradley, IU Indy is still shooting nearly 37% from long range this season. That’s pretty good, but at least for now, head coach Kate Bruce doesn’t have them leaning into what appears to be a strength. They get less than 30% of their shots from behind the arc, and that’s drifting out of the top 200 in the country per Her Hoop Stats.