Six days ago, Marquette women’s basketball lost their last game of 2025 maybe perhaps exclusively because they missed 14 layups in a seven point loss to St. John’s.
They came up with an interesting preventative measure to that idea on Sunday afternoon at the McGuire Center against a Villanova team that came in at 5-0 in the Big East and riding a 10 game winning streak: Don’t miss any three-point attempts.
Okay, that’s not 100% accurate. In fact, Marquette missed their first two three-point attempts
of the game….. before hitting their next five in a row and 11 of the next 16. The Golden Eagles — led by 4-for-4 from Halle Vice and 5-for-8 from Skylar Forbes — shot 61% from behind the arc against the Wildcats, and that means they shot 68.8% after the first two misses in the first three minutes of the contest.
Things generally speaking get a lot easier for you all over the court when you’re stacking up points like that. That’s how Marquette went into the second quarter up 23-14 after a Vice three as the last bucket of the quarter. Marquette wasn’t putting much of anything through the net for the first five minutes of the second quarter, but after Lee Volker hit a three with 4:30 left before halftime, that fended off Villanova as the Wildcats had cut the margin down to just two points. Eight straight points from Vice alone late in the period got Marquette up 10 and gave the junior from Iowa 22 points in the first half. It was only Marquette by six at halftime though as Villanova got two buckets in the final minute as MU kind of turned into a mess right there at the end and the Wildcats made them pay for being sloppy.
Marquette made Villanova pay for that coming out of the locker room, and some good old fashioned two-point baskets — specifically five layups! — were the grounding point of the 15-3 run for the Golden Eagles that broke this game wide open. After Skylar Forbes scored with 5:21 left in the third, it was Marquette by 18, 57-39. It was 16 heading to the fourth, and MU by 20 with 6:22 left to go in the game.
For a moment there, Marquette was unable to get a stop or get a bucket, and Villanova put up eight straight. It took them nearly two minutes to do it, though. Marquette by 11 at that point, and the clock was winding under 2:40. The lead dipped as low as just 10, but a Halle Vice and-1 stemmed the tide and pretty much made it so Nova was out of time.
I have said Halle Vice’s name a lot here, and I even said she had 22 in the first half, matching her jersey number in the opening 20 minutes. She only scored 10 after intermission, but that’s still a new career high 32 points for Vice to go with 11 rebounds, two assists, a block, and two steals in 39 minutes. I don’t know what everyone else in the Big East has been doing this week, but if averaging 22 points and 13 rebounds in three games isn’t enough for Big East Player of the Week, the award’s a sham.
As you’d expect, Vice was not the only one having a nice day as MU snapped that Villanova win streak. Skylar Forbes had 20 points, eight rebounds, and four assists, and Jaidynn Mason added 20 points, two rebounds, and a team high seven assists. I don’t know if Marquette keeps track of the last time they had three players score at least 20 points in a game, but I’d be fascinated to know if it’s happened before.
Highlights, and there’s a lot to choose from, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Peacock:
Up Next: It’s time for Marquette to take The Halle Vice Show to national television. The Golden Eagles will be back in action on Thursday night when they play host to Creighton. Tipoff is at 7pm Central time, and the game will be broadcast on truTV. The Bluejays are 7-8 on the year and 3-3 in Big East play after getting a 67-59 home win over Butler on Sunday to snap a three game losing streak.
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