Marquette Women's Basketball Drops 2015-16 Opener To UW-Green Bay

Well, maybe it was by the end.

UW-Green Bay was hitting threes all night and Marquette wasn't as the Golden Eagles fell 77-55 to the Phoenix on the opening night of the women's basketball schedule.  McKayla Yentz led Marquette with 13 points largely on the back of hitting the only trio of three-pointers that Marquette connected on in the game.

Going in to the game, I figured that GB had a significant advantage on Marquette, due to their long history of winning the Horizon League title over the past two decades.  The Golden Eagles showed some fire, though, and although they fell behind 14-4 before five minutes had wound off the clock, they only trailed by nine after one quarter and cut that down to just a six point margin at the half.

Things went sideways for MU in the second half when Green Bay starting burying triples on the regular.  The Phoenix hit four of their nine long range attempts after intermission to end up with a second half effective field goal percentage of 62.1%.  Combine that with MU only managing to hit nine shots the entire second half (eFG of just 39.6%) and Green Bay getting to nearly 47% of the shots that they actually missed, and things got bad fast.  An 8-0 UWGB run spread out over two minutes in the middle of the third quarter pushed the lead from seven to 15, and after Laken James drained a more than half court prayer at the horn, Green Bay was up 13 with 10 minutes to play.

Marquette would hit just four field goals in the final frame as Green Bay slowly just dragged the lead out to past 20 points.  Two free throws from Allazia Blockton with 42 seconds left ended the scoring for the game, although MU had a couple chances to get it below 20 in the waning moments but came up empty.

Every one of Marquette's eight freshmen played in the game, and as could be expected in that situation, there's good news and bad news.  Good news: Danielle King drained all four of her shots.  Bad news: Blockton went 3-10 and had four turnovers, matching King and Amani Wilborn for the team high.  Good news: Wilborn came off the bench after starting in the exhibition game and contributed five assists, a rebound, and a steal to go with her six points.  Bad news: Natisha Hiedeman and Olivia Moskari combined to go 0-8 from behind the arc, and Hiedeman missed all five of her free throws, too.

Up Next: A fairly quick turn around for the Golden Eagles, although not as quick as they'll get when Big East season rolls around.  They'll be back in the Al McGuire Center on Monday afternoon - yes, a matinee - to take on IUPUI.  It'll also be the yearly Milwaukee Public Schools game.  The Jaguars opened their season last night with a 77-71 road loss to Eastern Illinois.