Marquette Women’s Basketball Gets Back To Winning

It took Marquette women’s basketball approximately 11 minutes to get their footing against Butler on Wednesday afternoon. Through the first 11 minutes of the game, the Golden Eagles were leading 20-18 against the visiting Bulldogs. Over the final 29 minutes of the game, MU outscored Butler by the margin of 57-30 to easily coast to a 77-48 win. The W moves Marquette to 13-4 overall on the year and 10-3 in Big East play, not to mention the fact that it snaps a two game skid by the Golden Eagles after facing UConn and DePaul in their last two games.

The game was almost over faster than in the first 11 minutes. Marquette zoomed out to a 7-0 lead in the first two minutes, and the Golden Eagles led 18-9 with 2:30 to go in the first quarter. MU didn’t have all that much trouble with the Bulldogs down in Indianapolis in the first meeting between the two teams this season, so this seemed to be going the same direction. Genesis Parker had something else to say about that, as she scored five of Butler’s seven points down the stretch in the first to cut the lead to just two points before Chloe Marotta sank a jumper to make the margin four at the break.

After MU started the second off with a Claire Kaifes turnover, Jaia Alexander scored on the other end for that 20-18 margin. The next 12 points were all from the Golden Eagles, as Jordan King capped off the run with 4:38 left in the quarter to put MU up 14, 32-18. That’s where the margin would be at halftime as well, and two buckets from Lauren Van Kleunen and a jumper from Camryn Taylor out of the locker room pushed the lead to 20 for the first time.

That was pretty much that for this one. Butler cut it back to 15 pretty quickly, but Marquette would lead by as many as 23 before the third quarter ended. The Golden Eagles led by at least 20 points for the entire fourth quarter. They flirted with pushing it to 30 and above, but the Bulldogs put together a 9-0 in the middle of the frame to trim the lead to exactly 20. Like I said, though, that was as close as they got.

Marquette didn’t win this game with shooting like they did on the road against Butler earlier this season. In fact, the shooting was kind of bad, with MU finishing at 41% from the field and 29% from behind the arc. But the Golden Eagles were splashing Windex all over the place on both ends, cleaning the glass with ferocity. 48% of all of Marquette’s misses ended up back in a white jersey’d hand, which is how the Golden Eagles ended up with 17 second chance points in the game. On the other end, MU limited the Bulldogs to just three offensive rebounds for the entire 40 minutes. If you prefer it in tempo-free concepts, Marquette grabbed NINETY PERCENT of the available defensive rebounds. That’s riiiiiidiculous, and the fact that MU also induced turnovers from Butler on 29% of possessions in a 70 possession game helps explain how MU ended up shooting 30 more field goal attempts than the Bulldogs in a 40 minute basketball game.

Four of the five Marquette starters hit double digits in points, led by 12 from Chloe Marotta. Selena Lott put together an 11/5/7 afternoon, while Jordan King chipped in all over with 11/9/6. Camryn Taylor was the fourth, getting 10 points, seven rebounds, a block, and three steals. Lauren Van Kleunen led all players with 10 rebounds, but missed a double-double with seven points.

Can I interest you in some highlights, courtesy of FloHoops and GoMarquette.com?

Up Next: The Golden Eagles will be looking to pick up a road win next time out. They’ll be in Rhode Island on Saturday to face Providence. Marquette beat Providence 89-40 in Milwaukee waaaaaaaay back on December 4th, and the Friars have gone just 3-5 in the eight games they’ve played since then. As I type this, they are up 27-21 at the half in Omaha against Creighton.