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Marquette's men's team played yesterday, so this means you have no reason to not head over to the McGuire Center for POST SEASON BASKETBALL! Marquette's women's team faces off with Northern Iowa tonight at 7pm. If you want a seat with a chairback, those will run you $10, while the bench seating is general admission at $7. If you're not local to Milwaukee, you can fire up your browser of choice and stream the game through GoMarquette.com.
I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that this Marquette women's basketball season has been loaded with thrills. There's been injuries all over the place, including one that's keeping Courtney Thomas out of this one as well as a shoulder strain that Lauren Tibbs will be able to play through. There's been way too many close games that went against Marquette, and things have been rough on the ball protection end of things for the Golden Eagles. But none of that matters now. After missing out on the postseason last year for the first time in 10 seasons, Marquette is back in and gets a chance to send Sarina Simmons, their lone senior, out in style.
Northern Iowa won four of their last six games to get themselves to a point where they could end up at .500 after getting knocked out of the Missouri Valley Conference tournament. They've also won their last three true road games, so they're probably not going to be very worried about starting the WNIT on the road. They finished tied for fourth in the MVC, but senior guard Jacqui Kalin was named MVC Player Of The Year. Forward Hannah Schonhardt was the only other Panther to earn conference honors, picking up a spot on the All-Freshman team.
Kalin is the only player for UNI to start every single game of the season, and unsurprisingly, she's the only Panther with a scoring average in double digits. Kalin averages nearly 20 points a game, and in her spare time, dishes out nearly four assists a game (a team high) while grabbing more than five rebounds. She's not the team leader on the glass, though. That honor goes to senior forward Amber Kirschbaum, who's put up five double-doubles this year, including one in both of UNI's conference tournament games.