Marquette Women's Basketball Gives Up Halftime Lead; Loses To Georgetown

The Golden Eagles blitzed the Hoyas early and held a 12 point lead at halftime.  It was all Hoyas after intermission, though, as Georgetown came roaring back to take the lead early in the fourth quarter and hold on for the 75-72 win over Marquette.  The loss snaps Marquette's five game losing streak and drops the Golden Eagles to 11-12 overall and 6-6 in Big East play.

I can't help but feel slightly responsible after writing a lengthy discussion of their postseason hopes in the preview for this weekend.  Then again, Georgetown was one of three RPI top 100 games left on the schedule for the Golden Eagles, so it wasn't going to be easy to come away from McDonough Arena with the win.

While the Hoyas actually led by eight with 2:32 to play, Marquette still had a chance to win.  They whittled that lead down to just one point on a pair of free throws by Allazia Blockton with 17 seconds left as Marquette held Georgetown scoreless after the 2:30 mark.  With that kind of time and score, though, MU was forced to foul to get the ball back.  Dionna White drained both of her free throws, and a Blockton triple rang off the rim as time expired.

The ultimate cause of the final result was shooting fortunes reversing in the second half.  Marquette shot 53% in the first half, and 50% on threes, while Georgetown went for just 39% and 17% on six long ball attempts.  The second half? The Golden Eagles shot just 22% and made just one of 10 three point attempts while the Hoyas kept it inside to shoot 50% and split a pair of three balls.

I should clarify: when I say "Georgetown" for the second half, I really just mean White and Logan Battle.  The pair combined to shoot 10-20 while the Hoyas only took 34 shots in the half.  We could probably toss Faith Woodard in that bunch, too, as she went 4-7.  White was the star for Georgetown in the game, going for 15 points, nine rebounds, and eight assists.  It was quite the performance for the freshman, especially since it came in a game with Blockton, the leading candidate for Freshman of the Year, on the other end of the court.

That's not to say that Blockton was struggling.  She scored 19 points to increase her freshman scoring record, doing most of her damage on 11-14 free throw shooting.  Blockton also added seven rebounds, four assists, and two steals.  In addition to the freshman scoring record, Blockton surpassed her head coach, Carolyn Kieger, and Angel Robinson to break the freshman record for made free throws with her fifth make from the charity stripe in this game.

Up Next: Marquette is off to the Philadelphia area for a Sunday afternoon contest against Villanova.  The Wildcats (14-9, 7-5 Big East) are coming off a 28 point loss to DePaul on Friday afternoon where they were only down 2 at halftime.