When: Saturday, February 22, at 1pm Central
Where: Walsh Gymnasium, in South Orange, NJ
Audio/Visual: Seton Hall hates you, and thus there is a paid video stream. Live stats will be here.
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Marquette bounced back from a 10 point halftime deficit against second place DePaul on Tuesday night to pick up a 80-74 win. That moved Marquette into a tie for fourth place with Villanova at 9-5 in league games. Tomorrow afternoon Marquette tangles with seventh place Seton Hall before heading into a home stretch where they will play the teams in first place (St. John's, 12-2) and third place (Creighton, 10-4), as well as those pesky Wildcats, who currently hold a tiebreaker over Marquette in the standings. With those contests left on the schedule, Marquette can have a lot of control of their seed in the Big East tournament, but it starts in South Orange.
In the first meeting between the two squads this season, Marquette came away with a scant 62-60 victory. The teams traded 12 points leads at various points in the game, but it was turnovers late that decided the game. First, Arlesia Morse forced a turnover that took the ball away from the Pirates when they had a chance to tie or take the lead. Then Apiew Ojulu coughed the ball up, and it looked like Seton Hall would get that chance, but Bra'Shey Ali fumbled the ball out of bounds as time expired.
Katherine Plouffe was Marquette's leader in that game as she has been all season with 14 points, five rebounds, five assists and a steal. While Plouffe sits at second in the conference in scoring and third in rebounding, she has Pirates for neighbors. Tabatha Richardson-Smith trails Plouffe by just one-tenth of a point per game, 17.1 to 17.0. Over in the rebounding column, Ali is just a bit in front of Plouffe, grabbing 10.5 rebounds compared to 9.6 for the Golden Eagles star. A third Pirate, Ka-Deidre Simmons sits second in the conference in assists at 5.4 per game, while Marquette sophomore Brooklyn Pumroy averages 5.1 helpers.
With three different players that high on the leader boards in the three main statistical categories, you have to start wondering how exactly the Pirates find themselves below .500 in league play. Five of their last seven games have come against the teams in the top five slots in the standings, and Seton Hall has lost every single one of those five games. Three of the losses were by five or fewer points, so they've been competitive against the top half of the league, but they just haven't managed to find ways to win.