Marquette Women’s Basketball Seizes Control Of Second Place In The Big East

We went into Sunday’s Marquette/Butler women’s basketball game with a few questions. Could Marquette contain Kristen Spolyar? What kind of impact would having Lauren Van Kleunen all game long have on Marquette? Would Selena Lott play after sitting out on Friday night against Xavier?

And then none of it mattered after five minutes.

Isabelle Spingola cashed three triples in the first five minutes of the game to blast Marquette out to an 11 point lead, and it was all Golden Eagles all the time from there on out. By the time 40 minutes was over, it was 76-54 and Marquette had secured full and sole control of second place in the Big East.

There’s not much in way of discussion of what happened in the game. Jordan King pushed the lead to 16 at the end of the first quarter on a last second bucket, Camryn Taylor got it up to 20 with 2:21 left in the half, and it never got closer than 17 the rest of the way. In fact, even with the lead peaking as high as 25 late in the game, this game could have been much more in Marquette’s favor. The Golden Eagles committed 22 turnovers along the way, nine of them in the second quarter and five before MU even scored a point in the period. Still, even with Marquette coughing it up nearly 33% of the time, the Golden Eagles still outscored Butler in every single quarter of the game, slowing building their margin as the game went along.

The turnovers were notable, but so was pretty much everything else going on. Marquette shot an impressive 62.7% effective field goal percentage in the game, in large part because they knocked in six of their 13 long range attempts. The heavy lifting there was by Spingola, who hit five of her eight attempts to finish with a game high 17 points. The Golden Eagles also hit the glass with a relentless enthusiasm, especially on offense. What few misses they had ended up in their own hands a little more than half the time, which was a major reason why, even with the turnovers, MU still scored 1.12 points per possession in the game. It was a team effort on the offensive glass, with seven women getting at least one. On the other end, Marquette did a hell of a job stopping Butler from second chances led by Altia Anderson, who had 10 of her game high 12 rebounds on the defensive end. Anderson also excelled on the offensive end, chipping in 10 points, including this sweet layup.

Let’s check out some highlights, courtesy of the Big East Digital Network.

Up Next: One final road trip for the season. With their 20th win of the season and 11th win in league play, Marquette has already sewn up a top six finish in the Big East, and every game just helps nudge them further and further up the table. On Friday night, they’ll visit Villanova (14-11, 8-6 Big East) followed by a visit to Georgetown (5-20, 2-12 Big East) on Sunday afternoon.