Big East Announces The Remainder Of The Marquette Women’s Basketball Schedule

On Friday afternoon, just four days before the last previously announced game for Marquette women’s basketball was set to be played, the Big East announced the remainder of the league schedule. Just barely in under the wire, but hey, they did have a little bit of a Christmas holiday buffer in there, eh?

Well, actually, it’s not the full remainder of the schedule, at least not any more. In addition to the announcement of the rest of the schedule, Marquette also announced that Saturday’s game on the road against Seton Hall has been postponed due to “COVID-19 testing protocols within the SHU program.” Take that to mean whatever you want it to mean, but the long and short of it is that there is no visit to Seton Hall on the freshly announced list of games, so the Golden Eagles and Pirates are going to have to work something out along the way. Or maybe not, and MU only plays 19 league games this year. Who knows? That’s a problem for down the road.

In a fun — or maybe not so fun — scheduling quirk, Marquette’s first two Big East games after Christmas will be against the same team. The not so fun part comes in because the team in question is preseason league favorite Connecticut Huskies. Yeah. Back-to-back encounters with the Huskies await Marquette, with UConn making their return to Milwaukee on Wednesday, December 30th, and MU tagging along back to Storrs for a return bout on Saturday, January 2nd.

Marquette’s first opportunity to fit in a game against Seton Hall comes between a home game against Villanova on Saturday, January 9th and a visit to St. John’s on Sunday, January 17th. That might be the best time to make the game up, as Marquette will already be heading out to the New York City area, not to mention the benefit of more than a week off. The Pirates are scheduled to visit Creighton on January 13th, so it’s not the best of timing for Seton Hall.

If the goal is just to play Seton Hall twice, then we should probably keep an eye on the Pirates’ scheduled trip to Milwaukee, which is set for Wednesday, January 27th. Unfortunately, that’s a three-game week for Marquette, as they’ll visit Butler on Sunday, January 24th, and host Xavier on Saturday, January 30th. I really don’t think we can fit another game in there while SHU and Marquette will be in proximity to each other.

There’s one more gap in the Marquette schedule that could be used. MU is set to host Creighton on Wednesday, February 17, and then go to DePaul on Wednesday, February 24. That’s another week long space in the plan, and Marquette’s travel to DePaul doesn’t make that too egregious of an arrangement to host Creighton, go to South Orange over the weekend, and then drive down I-94 to see the Blue Demons. Seton Hall has a home game already in that weekend slot, as they host Providence on Saturday, February 20th.

Obviously, whatever windows exist in the Seton Hall schedule don’t match up well with Marquette. I’m not going to plot out the Pirates’ schedule to find them, but let’s just presume that any time SHU is free, Marquette is already set to play someone else based on the information we already have.

Marquette is set to wrap up their first 20 game league schedule with back-to-back road games. That trip to DePaul is the second to last regular season game scheduled, while the finale comes on Saturday, February 27, out in the Philadelphia area against Villanova. That makes the February 17th game against Creighton the currently scheduled Senior Day game for Selena Lott and Lauren Van Kleunen.

There are no tipoff times or television opportunities to go with these dates for now. You can go ahead and presume that almost all of these games will end up on FloHoops, with the exception of the UConn games. The Huskies have their own TV deal with SNY, and so those games should end up on TV that way. In theory, anyone who is outside the Connecticut/SNY home viewing area should be able to stream the games for free as long as they have some sort of cable provider that they can sign in with through Fox Sports, but I haven’t actually attempted to do that yet to see the Huskies.

UPDATE [12/23/20]: On December 22, the league announced some changes to the schedule. Because Marquette needed to work in that Seton Hall game, three other games have been shifted. The list below has strikethroughs on games that have been moved to a different date, so ignore those and focus on the other ones.

Here’s the schedule as we know it right now:

Wednesday, December 30: vs Connecticut
Saturday, January 2: at Connecticut
Sunday, January 3: vs DePaul
Wednesday, January 6: at Creighton
Saturday, January 9: vs Villanova

Friday, January 15: at Seton Hall
Sunday, January 17: at St. John’s
Wednesday, January 20: vs Georgetown
Sunday, January 24: at Butler
Wednesday, January 27: vs Seton Hall

Saturday, January 30: vs Xavier
Wednesday, February 3: at Georgetown
Friday, February 5: vs Connecticut
Sunday, February 7: vs DePaul
Wednesday, February 10: vs Butler

Saturday, February 13: at Providence
Wednesday, February 17: vs Creighton
Wednesday, February 24: at DePaul
Saturday, February 27: at Villanova
Monday, March 1: at Connecticut

If you want to check out the entirety of the schedule for every team, it’s right here.