Marquette Women’s Basketball Fumbles Away The Big East Championship

After 10 minutes at Wintrust Arena, #2 seeded Marquette women’s basketball had an 18-17 lead on top seeded DePaul in the Big East conference tournament championship game. The Golden Eagles also had five turnovers, which is suboptimal, but liveable.

After 20 minutes at Wintrust Arena, Marquette trailed by 12, 45-33, and the Golden Eagles had committed 13 total turnovers.

You see how this is going.

By the end of 40 minutes, Marquette had committed 27 turnovers and ended up with an 88-74 loss to DePaul. It is MU’s third straight loss to DePaul in the Big East title game. The Golden Eagles are now 24-8 on the year.

Look, there’s not much to talk about in this game other than Marquette apparently dunked their sideline bench towels in butter before the game. The Golden Eagles ended up shooting 58% from the field in the game, easily outpacing the Blue Demons at 42%. Sure, DePaul benefited from connecting on 14 of 24 long range attempts in the game, but Marquette was throwing in shots every which way all game long..... or at least they were when they maintained possession long enough to put a shot up. But DePaul attempted 19 more field goals than Marquette, and there’s your ball game.

There’s really no such thing as moral victories in these kinds of things. However, I would like to point out that DePaul’s lead peaked at 23 points early in the fourth quarter. As you can see, the lead wrapped up at just 14 points. It’s a small thing, but I appreciate that MU head coach Megan Duffy had her team — comprised of six freshmen, remember — out here scrapping even though they really did not have a chance to execute a comeback.

Then again, it was kind of easy to motivate them in that fashion, as DePaul did not let up on the full court pressure that they were handing out even while up 20-plus in the fourth. I’m not yelling at Doug Bruno for doing that, just pointing out that it’s easier to get your team to fight when they have to fight up and down the court, that’s all.

Lauren Van Kleunen wrapped up all-tournament team honors with a 22 point, five rebound performance here where she missed just one shot all night. Selena Lott shot 10-for-14 in this one to finish with a team high 26 points, and she added six rebounds and six assists, too.

How about some highlights, such as they are, courtesy of FS1 and GoMarquette.com?

Up Next: Marquette sits and waits for Selection Monday, one week from today. As of Monday morning, ESPN’s Charlie Creme had the Golden Eagles as a #10 seed in his bracket. I don’t know where the Marquette is in his seed list, but I do know that three of the #11 seeds are in Creme’s Last Four In.