Marquette Women's Basketball Suffers Unsurprising Loss To #7 Duke

At the 16:48 mark of the first half, Chelsie Butler drained a three-pointer and Marquette took an 8-5 lead.  The next five shots that the Golden Eagles took were all three-pointers as well, but all five of those missed.  On the next trip up the floor, Duke's Elizabeth Williams hit a jumper, and things were all tied at eight each.

That would be the closest Marquette came to leading again, as the Blue Devils closed the first half on a 36-12 run en route to an easy 83-51 win at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

I suppose I shouldn't be that dismissive of what the Golden Eagles did against Duke.  While it was a 22 point lead at the half, MU was able to carve into that lead in the early parts of the second half.  A three-pointer from Arlesia Morse cut it to a 12 point margin with 14 minutes to play, and MU got it back to 12 on a bucket from Butler with just under 10 minutes to play.  The effort to get it to that point took too much out of the Golden Eagles, though, and with six minutes left, the lead was back up over 20 points, and it just got worse from there.

Duke had four players score in double digits, including a game high 22 points from Rebecca Greenwell.  Marquette was led by 17 points from Arlesia Morse, all of which came in the second half, and Kenisha Bell contributed 10 points.  I suspect that shot selection might be a focal point of practice this week, as the Golden Eagles shot 9-39 (23.1%) behind the arc.  You can't knock Morse for going 5-12, but I'm going to need an explanation as to how and/or why Butler, Lauren Tibbs, and Apiew Ojulu were a combined 2-10.

Up Next: Marquette returns home for two games on the opposite ends of Thanksgiving.  They'll host UWM (1-2) on Wednesday night before welcoming in South Dakota (2-2) on Sunday afternoon.