Jordan Meulemans is no stranger to the Al McGuire Center.
Growing up only an hour and a half away from Milwaukee in De Pere, Wisconsin, she would frequent Marquette women’s basketball games, watching Natisha Hiedeman, Lauren Van Kleunen and Chloe Marotta take the court for the Golden Eagles.
But she’s never played on the Al McGuire Court in the blue & gold. Until Monday.
After recovering from a torn ACL and navigating the transfer portal, she’s healthy and ready to enjoy her homecoming at Marquette.
When going through the transfer portal after her redshirt sophomore season at Butler. Meulemans said that Marquette had a place in her heart. A determining factor, her family could attend most games, something that she missed in the early stages of her collegiate career.
“Getting those names like Marquette, I looked at Creighton. Wisconsin was one,” Meulemans said. “But for me, I knew in my heart I wanted to go to Marquette, so why wait?”
Meulemans jumped in the portal after playing her first two seasons at conference rival Butler, where she shot just north of 42 percent from downtown, averaging nearly eight points per game, with her 3-point percentage being good for fourth in the Big East as a sophomore.
Marquette’s head coach, Cara Consuegra, said that Meulemans’ penchant for perimeter shooting stood out when offering her a spot to complete an all-returning 2024-25 roster.
“We were very specific about whoever we brought in, had to shoot the three,” Consuegra said. “But she also can defend, she’s not just a shooter.”
The Golden Eagles’ season-opener Monday was Meulemans’ first since her sophomore season, after she tore her ACL in her right knee last fall, leading up to what would have been her junior year at Butler, had she not gotten hurt.
Meulemans said that she had been playing basketball since second grade and hadn’t dealt with an injury like this before. But being unable to walk led her to shift her mindset to seeing the incremental progress in recovery, like taking steps down a yellow brick road.
“Something that I thought of every day during my recovery was, ‘I’m getting 1% better’,” Meulemans said. “Even though I couldn’t bend my leg all the way, I can still bend it one degree better each day, I looked at the small wins.”
Brick by brick, the wins kept stacking up. But the toughest part was mentally overcoming the fear of re-aggravating her knee. For the first time since the injury, she had to do the same move that caused the tear.
“It was scary. I was like ‘I can do it,'” Meulemans said. “My coaches and teammates around kept encouraging me; now I just had to trust myself and know that I did it before, I can do it again.”
Marquette is the only team in Division I women’s basketball to return all of its players from 2024-25. Meulemans looks to fit into the Golden Eagles’ scheme as a perimeter shooter and defender who can take pressure off of Halle Vice and Skylar Forbes, who was recently named to the Naismith Player of the Year watchlist.
While getting used to the offense over the summer, Meulemans learned from watching senior guard Bridget Utberg, who carved out a perimeter penchant off the bench for the Golden Eagles last season, evidenced by converting a critical three during the fourth quarter in the program’s WBIT win over Drake. Meulemans said that their shared strengths complement each other in an ‘amazing’ way.
“Just playing off of her is great, having two shooters on a team is amazing, you can space the floor so well with Bridget (Utberg), she can get past her defender super fast, a little bit faster than me, but I always got her back, always there for her, so I love that,” Meulemans said.
Having not played in a game in almost two years, Meulemans is looking forward to her homecoming tour as she takes her next steps across the yellow brick road and takes the floor for Marquette.
“I’m excited for the adrenaline, playing with my teammates,” Meulemans said. “I can’t wait, honestly to dive on the floor for a ball, just all the little things; smile with my teammates, celebrate with them, not only on the floor, on the bench as well, just to be with a new team that wants to win.”
This article was written by Mikey Severson. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @MikeySeversonMU.
