Providence Pulls The Upset On Marquette Women’s Basketball

Marquette Golden Eagles women’s basketball had no answer on defense for Providence’s two best players on Friday night, which led to the Friars pulling the 66-64 upset over the Golden Eagles.

Marquette falls to 16-5 overall and 7-3 in league play, snapping a four game winning streak along the way. Providence moves to 2-8 in Big East games and 10-11 overall. The win ends a seven game losing streak for PC and now gives them one more conference win than they had all of last season.

Yeah, this was a bad loss for Marquette, and, from a certain perspective, it was 100% avoidable.

Yoyo Nogic came into the game as the second best three-point shooter in the Big East, draining 47% of her long ball attempts overall and 44% in conference games. Seems like an obvious place to start a scouting report, especially after she went 5-for-9 in the first meeting between the two squads, right? Well, what happened instead was Nogic scored a game high 27 points largely because of her 7-for-11 three-point shooting. That’s sub-optimal. Nogic made all four of her long range attempts in the opening quarter as PC opened up a 24-17 lead on the Golden Eagles after 10 minutes.

Marquette bounced back from that rough first quarter by outscoring PC 20-9 in the second to take a 37-33 lead at halftime. Things kept going in the Golden Eagles’ direction after the break as they scored the first five points of the third quarter to take a nine point lead. A Danielle King triple at the 5:45 mark made it a 10 point lead, but the Friars outscored MU 11-2 the rest of the way, and it was just a one point margin with 10 minutes to play.

The two teams traded buckets to open the fourth quarter, but thanks to one of those being a triple from Nogic, Sarah Beal tied the game at 55 with her basket. Beal, who scored eight of her 25 points in the final frame, and Nogic scored the next seven points of the game, which, in retrospect, was where PC won the game. Marquette would make a rally and close that seven point margin with a layup from Erika Davenport with 36 seconds left. PC called timeout, burned a bunch of clock, and got a jumper from Nogic to take a 2 point lead. MU head coach Carolyn Kieger took advantage of the rulebook and called timeout right away, advancing the ball to MU’s end with three seconds remaining. That was just enough time for the Golden Eagles to get two shots off: a layup attempt from King and a putback try from Davenport, but both bounced away, leaving Marquette with an unexpected loss.

Speaking of unexpected losses, Marquette was without the services of sophomore guard Natisha Hiedeman in this game. She was at the game in street clothes, but without any word as to the reason for her absence, it’s unclear as to whether she’ll be available later this weekend.

Four Golden Eagles scored in double figures in this game, led by 17 from Allazia Blockton. She’s now up to 928 points in her career, and yes, kids, she’s only a sophomore. In addition to Marquette having an evenly distributed scoring output, they spread the assists around, with the same four women also chipping in at least three assists, and three of them grabbed at least four rebounds.

Up Next: As always is the case with women’s basketball, it’s a quick turnaround for the Golden Eagles, but this time they had a lot of travel along the way. Following Friday night’s contest, MU had to travel out to Omaha for their next game, as they’ll be taking on Creighton on Sunday afternoon. Tipoff is scheduled for 1pm Central, and the Bluejays are coming off a 60-56 loss to #21 DePaul on Friday night.