It was a couple of scoring droughts forced by Marquette women’s basketball’s defense that ultimately turned the tide against the Providence Friars in a 78-61-win.
Even with the Friars up at the first quarter media timeout and the Golden Eagles on the higher end of the back-and-forth first quarter, ahead by one. But then, Marquette’s defense would stop Providence in its tracks.
Senior guard Jaidynn Mason epitomized the Golden Eagle defense when she ripped the ball right out of the Friars’ hands, got to the rack — where she was fouled — and then converted both from the stripe with just over six minutes to play in the second. From 7:27 until the 2:45 mark, Providence did not make a single field goal while Marquette scored 12 unanswered.
But when the Friars found their scoring drought answer, senior guard Bridget Utberg converted a deep 3-pointer to turn the tide back towards the Golden Eagles. With senior guard Olivia Porter out of the lineup with a lower body injury, Marquette head coach Cara Consuegra said that plays like these from Utberg gave her team a lift off the bench.
“I think [Utberg’s] done a great job, we need her to be solid defensively, keep the offense moving, and then we need her to knock down threes when she has those opportunities,” Consuegra said. “Most importantly, her effort and winning plays have set the tone.”
Sporting a 17-point halftime advantage, Marquette’s defense came up big once more out of the intermission, keeping Providence without a bucket for the first five minutes of the third quarter, and providing MU the ability to further build on its lead.
Friar graduate student forward Tenesia Brown tallied a game high 24 points, but Marquette only allowed her to score eight in the last 20 minutes, compared to racking up 16 of Providence’s 29 first half points.
“[Brown] really crushed us in the first half, I thought we did a better job with her personnel,” Consuegra said. “We know Providence wants to get to the paint, part of our game plan was trying to take that paint away, bring some help when we could, and I thought we settled down and did that better.”
The extra cushion was a comfort to MU fans as Providence started to rally a little bit in the fourth, spearheaded by the chaos defense that gave any Marquette fan’s heart rate a jolt after seeing DePaul’s press a week prior in an almost comeback effort.
The Friars would ultimately trim the deficit to as little as 10 points with 2:57 to go in the contest from what was a 24-point Golden Eagle advantage midway through the third quarter.
But graduate student guard Lee Volker cast away any remnants of the last quarter against the Blue Demons by nailing a critical 3-pointer, she would finish the game with 19 points and seven rebounds. Junior guard Halle Vice had 15 points, marking her third straight double-double and seventh of Big East play. Marquette won the board battle by four, but was able to turn those into scores, with 11 fast-break and six second-chance points.
“I think rebounding is always a focus for us, because if we rebound, we win games, so I think we did a good job of keeping that focus through the whole 40 minutes,” Volker said.
MU’s defense buckled down once more, as the Golden Eagles would allow only one more Providence field goal after Volker’s trey, while Skylar Forbes chipped in two of her own perimeter shots in the final minutes. She would lead Marquette with 22 points off the bench as the Golden Eagles’ defense allowed them to pull away for the final homestretch.
Consuegra said that her defense is coming together at the right time, with the Big East tournament not too far from the horizon.
“Nonconference, early Big East we were a little up and down,” Consuegra said. “I felt probably since the game at St. John’s, that we started to gel. We’re playing scout right, personnel better, we know the scheme better. But I think we’re just playing together well, we fly around, cover each other, communicating on a higher level. I think that’s made us a really great defensive team over the past couple of weeks.”
This article was written by Mikey Severson. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @MikeySeversonMU.
