Marquette Women’s Basketball Gets Left In The Dust By Creighton

Broad sides of barns were safe when Marquette was shooting on Monday night, as the Golden Eagles struggled to connect on anything on their way to an 83-63 loss to Creighton. With the loss in their Big East home opener, MU drops to 2-1 in league play this season, while the Bluejays advance to 3-0 and a tie for first place with DePaul.

Marquette had just one quarter where they shot better than 35% against the Bluejays, and Creighton took advantage, posting an effective field goal percentage of 58.1% to keep extending their lead further and further away from Marquette. The visitors led by four after one quarter, nine at halftime, 15 at the three-quarters pole, and then finally, 20 at the final horn after briefly leading by as many as 23 late in the game.

It’s the simplest of basketball stories: Creighton got themselves a bunch of easy and open looks while making Marquette work for every damn thing they could possibly get. It’s not complicated. The most surprising part about the whole thing wasn’t how Creighton rebounded from bad three point shooting in their first two Big East games to shoot 38% from distance here, it was how MU was completely unable to find an answer for Brianna Rollerson. The senior shot 10-for-14 to finish with 22 points and five rebounds and just kept either getting wide open under the basket or easily sealing her defender onto her back where they couldn’t do anything to stop her from easily laying the ball up and in.

Of course, she wasn’t the only Creighton player having themselves a night. Audrey Faber made eight of her 11 attempts, including 2-of-3 from long range, and Sydney Lamberty only missed one of her five shots on the evening. MU’s defense was able to quell Marissa Janning (3-of-10) but when you have three Golden Eagles combining to go 8-for-32, Janning’s struggles were barely noticeable.

The disappointing part is that Marquette played Creighton fairly well outside of the shooting issues going both directions. MU won the turnover battle, and they kept pace with the Bluejays in terms of offensive rebounding rate, with both squads grabbing up more than 30% of their own misses. You can’t really complain about a defense that forces a turnover on 18% of the possessions, but you can’t help but wonder what a few more turnovers by Creighton could have done to jumpstart the Marquette offense with a few more fast breaks.

Marquette was led on the night by a pair of 14 point performances from Erika Davenport and Amani Wilborn. Allazia Blockton was named Big East Player of the Week earlier on Monday, but she finished with just six points, three rebounds, and an assist. Upside, I suppose: She’s now sitting on exactly 800 career points.

How about some highlights, such as they are, courtesy of FS1 and GoMarquette.com?

Up Next: These league games just keep on coming, as Providence comes to the McGuire Center on Wednesday night. The Friars are 1-2 in league play after giving DePaul all they could handle on Monday night in a 61-56 loss.