Marquette Women’s Basketball Drops Their First Big East Game to Georgetown

I’ll make this short since talking about a 27-point beat down isn’t fun. Especially after I gave them so much praise in the preview just 24 hours ago. The Marquette Golden Eagles suffered their first Big East game of the season, 85-58, to the Georgetown Hoyas Friday night.

That is not a typo. Marquette went from 7-0 to 7-1 by way of a 27 point loss to a team that is now 8-10 and 3-5 in Big East play.

Literally nothing went right for Carolyn Kieger’s team and the Hoyas played their best game of the year. All winning streaks come to an end eventually but this was not the way most of us expected the Golden Eagles to lose their first game since their December 20th game against Notre Dame.

The game was close in the first quarter with the Golden Eagles holding a slim 22-21 point lead on the Hoyas. But after that, their offense was non-existent and Georgetown was lights out offensively. Marquette scored just 15 points combined in the middle two quarters and the outcome was pretty obvious after that. Marquette was beaten in practically every relevant statistical category. MU shot 31.3% from the field and 19.2% from behind the arc compared to GU’s 51.6% and 50% respectively. That’s wayyyy below Marquette’s season average of 45.6% and 31.6%. They also turned the ball over 20 times which will usually result in a loss by itself. They only led Georgetown in offensive boards but could not capitalize on it because they were only able to manage seven second chance points.

It was the Hoyas zone defense that shut down MU’s ability to get in the paint and make shots. The Golden Eagles weren’t able to crack the code and had to settle for outside shots which they missed...a lot. Georgetown played as good of an offensive game as you can making about half their shots (33-64) and connecting on half their 3-pointers (5-10). MU could not contain GU’s Cynthia Petke as she went off for 26 points and hauled in 13 boards. The other two players in double figures were Diona White and Mikayla Venson with 17 and 16 points a piece. No surprise there as those three players were the only ones averaging double digits coming in to the game.

Amani Wilborn led the way for Marquette with 20 points on 7-13 shooting. Erika Davenport’s 10 points made her the 27th 1,000 point scorer for Marquette (nice). That was the only good takeaway from this game. The rest of the team combined for an abysmal 20% from the field (8-40). Hats off to Georgetown for playing a near perfect game. They deserved the victory. For Marquette, this is a really bad loss that they didn’t need. Thankfully, DePaul also lost so they did not move into a tie with Marquette for the Big East lead. MU still holds a one game lead on DePaul as well as the tie-breaker since they beat them earlier this month. Creighton took an L as well, falling to Butler, so if there was ever a day to suffer an awful loss, this was pretty much the right one.

This is definitely a game to forget for the Golden Eagles. As Bill Belichick would say, “On to Villanova.”

Up Next: The Golden Eagles have a quick turnaround as they take on the Villanova Wildcats on the road tomorrow at 11am Central. The Wildcats are sitting in third in the Big East and coming off a blowout 84-58 victory over DePaul. They are 5-3 in the Big East and 15-4 overall. You can catch the action on FS1.