2018 Big East Championship: Marquette Women’s Basketball Catches The Business End Of DePaul’s Shooting

This is the first time I’ve started a recap before the game has ended because it was over at halftime. Like, no really, the Big East Tournament finals was done by the 20 minute mark of the game. The DePaul Blue Demons seemingly could not miss and played the perfect game to dismantle the Golden Eagles. I will get to the final score in a second (partially because I currently don’t know it) but first...

Let me tell you that this was more of DePaul playing their best game...(maybe ever?) than the Golden Eagles playing poorly. When a team starts the first half hitting 10 of their 18 threes, you’re going to be out of the game rather quickly if you can’t match it. It also messes with your psyche as a team. It’s hard to play effective offense when the other team is hitting it from everywhere on the court. At times they were contested threes too and that didn’t matter.

I want to tell you that I was a loyal fan and watched the entire game. But as you can already tell, I did not. My excuse is I have midterms to study for. Also, Marquette was down 23. So I watched until halftime while studying then I turned it off to completely focus on my studies. Like any good student would right? I casually checked back in with about five minutes left in the third and Marquette was down by thirty and Coach Carolyn Kieger had taken off all but one of her starters (leaving Natisha Hiedeman in). I don’t blame her, she had to change something up or send her team a message at the very least. Of course she did rotate them back in when the meaningless fourth quarter rolled around but still...yikes. You gotta feel for the MU starters.

Aaand the final score is...(checks Twitter feed to make sure the game has ended) 98-63. The funny thing is the score doesn’t matter...or the loss really because the Golden Eagles are still safely in the NCAA tournament. It just would have been nice to get back to back Big East Championships. Then we could have made an argument to be higher than a 7 seed, which is where women’s basketball bracketologist Charlie Creme (great name btw) had us before this game. The worst they could do now is move down a spot maybe two but likely not since DePaul showed the nation their best game of the year and MU just had an off night all together. The latter hasn’t happened all year and I don’t think it will happen again this season. Trust me, if there’s one thing this team is good at is bouncing back. Coach Kieger will have her squad ready to go in the first round of the Tournament.

If you want to check the stats for this game. Don’t. Why would you? But if you’re curious just go to GoMarquette.com click the tab that says sports, mouse over to women’s baskeball, and wait for their story to pop up recapping this game. I unfortunately (fortunately?) don’t have time to dive deep into what each player did and didn’t do because midterms. But let me just tell ya this: DePaul could not miss anything from behind the arc, forced Marquette into turnovers, and I believe all their starters were in double figures and all hit threes. They played a sensational game and sometimes you just gotta take the ‘L’, forget about it, and get back on the grind the next day.

I promise you this: this game is no indication for how Marquette will play moving forward into the Tournament. They were simply rattled early by DePaul’s perfection and could not recover to mount any sort of a comeback. So I encourage you to forget about this game like I will and give DePaul all the credit in the world. They are more than deserving of the Big East Championship.